


Pretty Bait

by EmmG



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:45:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7363648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmG/pseuds/EmmG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He moves the pieces on the chessboard; the king stays still, he does not step out unless cornered.</p><p>Elgar'nan uses Lavellan as a chess piece against Fen'Harel. Until she's not a useless, little thing to him anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Like a Lure

**Author's Note:**

> ***Warning for non-con
> 
> This stems from a Dragon Age Kink Meme Prompt that basically went like, and I cite;
> 
> "Post-game, Solas releases the Creators from their prison. As they go about conquering the world, Elgar'nan decides he wants vengeance and reparations [...] He eventually falls in love with his captive, the Inquisitor, and possibly making her his spouse."
> 
> So obviously not a pure, direct fill, hence why I didn't link it, but it was heavily inspired by the idea.
> 
> Of course, I'm a horrible person.

She doesn't expect the rush of magic when the Veil falls.

There are a lot of things she doesn't expect but they happen nonetheless. Somewhere, doors without locks swing wide open and those imprisoned for lack of selflessness and excess of arrogance walk free.

She expects Solas to step in for them; he is hard to miss now, he commands armies. He lives in hushed whispers and hurried words in dark corners and newly-erected statues of scowling wolves.

I had a plan, he told her before walking through the eluvian. A plan, a plan, a plan. And those words, that vague promise, is like a constant assault on her mind.

But the Creators walk and to some he extends a helping hand.

And that, perhaps, is the first pang of betrayal. There were so many before this, but it's a new world so the counter gets to start anew.

Falon'Din and Andruil he slaughters without second thought.

Sylaise and Ghilan'nain he welcomes at his side, and the Exalted Plains become their sanctuary once more. It regains its name of old—Dirthavaren. The dead fail to rise and all that withered blooms anew.

Leliana's little birds bring word and Solas brings his own.

He finds her in the Fade and tries holding her hand. She allows him at first because he looks so weary and trembles with nervous energy.

"All will be well," he promises.

"You said there wouldn't be any more false gods," she says.

And she wants to cry and scream at him. He said his goodbyes. He has no right to disrupt her life—not her peace, no, never that, for there is none—with tender smiles and soft touches.

"There will not," he says. "None will go against me. None will dare. They know their place."

He kisses the corner of her mouth, breath so hot. She thinks he wants to tread his fingers through her hair, use it to anchor her in, but dares not.

"Come to me," he requests.

There are tremors in her fingers; they spasm, trying to hold on to the lapels of his robes. "You wanted to walk alone," she whispers.

You didn't want me, is what she doesn't need to voice.

He rests his forehead against hers, and she can't remember the last time he allowed himself to be so vulnerable with her.

"Come with your Inquisition," he says. "My grounds are safe."

It's a different phrasing.

There is no expectation.

She thinks she sees a glimmer of mourning behind the steel of his eyes.

 

Their convoy is ambushed when they enter Emprise du Lion. Arrows are etched and swords drawn; rogues slip into stealth; the first bloom of frost blankets the ground around them as her mages retreat to a safe distance.

She doesn't give the order to attack straight away.

She waits. She hopes. She is stupid.

Sentinels weave through the trees, and if not for the occasional sunbeam their armor would be one with the dense greenery of the forest.

The snow has melted. Such an idle thought. It does not belong. She should be strategizing.

Their plate is elvhen made. They wear hoods that conceal the upper part of their faces and bathe in shadow the lower. Weapons of old are all etched with runes Dagna couldn't hope to recreate.

They glow with red lyrium.

She desperately hopes it's a branch of Solas' forces come to escort them.

An arrow whistles through the foliage. Her scout falls with a choked cry, crippled, his kneecap shattered.

She has been wrong before.

 

She finally sees their faces halfway through the journey, and she is still shaking. Blood from the fight has dried on her clothes. It comes off in flakes every time she shifts; the Sentinel forced into sharing a horse with her huffs whenever the scent of rusted copper invades the air around them.

They are not bare-faced as Solas promised. They know no freedom.

They wear the markings of Elgar'nan—the severe kind. Features reduced to an identical mask, one side darkened and the other adorned with complex curlicues.

Only their eyes differ, but none are kind.

When she sees the eluvian they're intending to cross, she grows frantic.

The Sentinel breaks her wrist just as she extracts the concealed dagger at her thigh. Bones snap like dry twigs and she is left gasping and sputtering.

It is somehow fitting that, in the distance, her staff suffers a similar fate.

She fought a dragon for it.

And now it is shattered over the knee of one who was always supposed to be kin.

Threads of magic reach out to her, wailing, crying, fading without a vessel to contain them. It had character, her staff, and now it is gone.

The faintest spark of lightning shocks her fingertips before she is pushed through the eluvian.

It feels like a caress.

 

He is different.

She knows she should run.

He parries her spells with lazy indifference and the great double doors to his bastion stand locked, the air around them heated, before she even reaches them.

"Your language is still odd to me," he says, walking in her footsteps. "It does not roll off the tongue easily."

"Then you shouldn't have taken it," she says.

She casts a static cage, but he snuffs it out. The air doesn't even have the time to crackle; sparks do not fly.

He crowds her then. Gets a hand around her throat and slams her head against the wall. Agony radiates through her skull—it is brilliant. There is something about that, being in pain. It heightens the senses, she thinks.

He does not speak. He looks at her. He looks and looks and looks and she thinks he will never avert his gaze.

He is taller than Solas, older. His hair has a streak of white in it and when he smiles it is but a facsimile of the true gesture. It never reaches his eyes.

He wears a cloak of midnight and his fingers are heavy with bejeweled claws; it is as if the rings have been carved into his flesh. When he strokes her cheek, detached but oddly gentle, she feels metal before the faint hint of skin.

"Greetings, Ellana," he says.

He strikes her across the face and her lower lip splits right down the middle.

 

The Sentinels don't bow before him. They kneel.

But they are not Sentinels at all, she realizes at some point. They are clad in the ceremonial green of the Dales. They lack the wolves of tales, but they are some sick reproduction of the Emerald Knights, they truly are. They are not the heroes who defended the Dales against the Chantry; they're legends plucked from the memories of the Dalish and twisted into horrible defenders. Their swords are staves. If they do not burn, then they twirl the weapon to slash.

They are terrifying.

And _he_ is oddly quiet for a self-proclaimed god.

He has the murals of himself restored. Amber for eyes gouged out by scavengers and beryl for flowing hair. But he is not grandiose. His eyes are mud and his hair charcoal—he steals grandeur from haughty illusions and forces it upon others to inspire fear.

And fear breeds devotion.

She stares with disgust.

And then with horror after he turns his attention to her.

"You have something that belonged to my wife," Elgar'nan says.

"You and the harellan both," he clarifies, and now he sounds a tad bemused as if the mere mention of Solas is enough to fog his mind.

"Come, Ellana," he says.

He takes her hand. He drags her behind him, putting pressure on her still broken wrist. It is sore and swollen. She tries not to whimper, but his clawed fingers undo whatever healing has had time to occur.

He makes her sit.

He tilts his head.

He tickles the soft underside of her jaw and says, "Up here."

"Will he come if you cry, I wonder," he says.

And he tries prying the vir'abelasan out of her. The Well recognizes him. But it's hers now, as much as it was Mythal's back in the day. It coils around her heart and pours into her bloodstream. He can't drain her even if some part of the Well yearns to go to him.

Her spine feels ready to snap. Her body is as taut as a bow of sylvanwood.

Elgar'nan releases her and she goes limp.

"It is not yours," he says, looking down at her, "but I cannot seem to take it back."

"I think that means that it's mine after all," she says—pants—gasps into his face.

He smiles without mirth, just as he always does. "It is unfortunate. But you can still scream, can you not?"

He breaks her wrist all over again. He twists and tugs and yanks, fracturing bones previously untouched and pulling muscles. He doesn't use any magic. He doesn't need to.

She can't recall the last time she screamed this loudly.

 

Some kind of bindings hold her in place. The tendrils of magic are barely visible; barely tangible, even, but sturdier than any rope.

Elgar'nan kneels at her side, chisel in hand.

"I dislike disfiguring pretty things," he says in way of confession, brushing hair out of her face.

"I shall use white. Yes, I think it would be fitting," he says, nodding to himself.

He puts his markings on her as it was done in the old days, breaking skin and pouring the ink straight into her veins.

Whorls, curlicues, pretty spirals. The white of the ink mixes with the scarlet of blood and as he nears her eyes, she catches a reflection of herself in the tool fashioned out of crystal. She weeps tears of milk and blood; a vallaslin that is more felt than seen.

He takes a moment to admire his handiwork.

She spits in his face, but he barely registers it.

"He won't come for me," she says. "You're wasting your time."

The crinkles at his eyes deepen as he grins—and this time it is genuine, frightening. "Ah," he murmurs, wiping her face clean with his sleeve, "he deserted you just as he did us."

"Yes," she says. Perhaps that will be enough.

"Fret not," Elgar'nan says. "He howls. He will give chase. These lands are mine."

He cups her face between his bony hands and when he pulls back his palms are bloodstained.

 

 

He makes her eat with him. The food is rich and greasy; pheasants stuffed with plums, fruits drowned in syrup, bread from all kinds of grain with raisins and seeds. She can hardly maneuver the fork with her broken wrist and settles on sipping spiced summerwine.

The silverware sends back the deformed sight of her newly-marked face.

Her stomach lurches. She settles the cup back on the table; the brief notion of spilling it all over his lap crosses her mind before the flame of defiance dies out.

He sits too close, hands folded, long fingers inter-weaved.

"Do you require help, da'len?" he inquires, eyes darting to the utensils.

"If you could die, that would be nice," she mutters.

He refills her cup. "I've spent too many ages asleep to die now, wouldn't you think?"

"That's a matter of debate," she says.

Somehow, echoing  Solas' words feels like a rebellion. It is petty and stupid and little, but then again she is all those things as well. It's fitting. It's all she has.

That's all Solas left her with. Soft words and omissions. She cherishes them still. Irrational child clinging to irrational gifts.

"You have a very elegant neck," Elgar'nan comments, eyes wandering, tone absentminded. "Swan-like."

She seizes the knife despite the radiant pain and attempts to drive it right through his hand.

The blunt tip cuts through the tablecloth and ends up embedded in the wood.

He is the one to howl now. His laughter is thunderous. She thinks, and then hopes, he might choke on it. But eventually his heaving chest comes to a halt and his breathing slows to a soft wheezing.

And still he can't stop laughing.

He ruffles her hair with none of his usual violence before departing.

 

Dirthamen comes and although she doesn't understand the ancient elvhen dialect, she knows who he is. He is flanked on all sides by soldiers wearing his vallaslin.

It's like observing two tidal waves meeting. Power rolls off their frames with each step. Elgar'nan welcomes Dirthamen into his arms and although it looks like an embrace, it doesn't feel so.

She hears names. She understands them.

_Sylaise._

_Ghilan'nain._

Dirthamen shakes his head, sorrowful, a dog that's failed before his master.

 Elgar'nan briefly looks up to glimpse her peeking from the upper level. She tries retreating into the shadows and away from the railing, but he's already seen her.

"Off you go, Ellana," he calls, voice shaking with some kind of rumbling laughter.

Ellana. Ellana. Ellana. He always uses her name and each time it devours her a little more from within.

With a name, he acknowledges her humanity and worth—and takes it all away with a lying smile and solid blow.

It would be better if he yelled at her. If he used slurs.

If he cropped her ears and called her an unfit child of a shameful legacy like all the others of his kind.

But no. She is always just Ellana.

She lingers a second too long.

Long enough to watch him strike Dirthamen. His wayward son staggers and bows his head as blood drips from a cut across his cheekbone.

 

She dreams of doors, but none open. The Fade is yet another cage.

Sometimes it is dark.

Sometimes it is grey.

Sometimes she sees Solas, but his form crumbles and burns to a crisp before she bloodies her feet trying to reach him.

 

"Talk to me," Elgar'nan says.

He corners her in the library, hands clasped at his back.

She lowers herself back into her favored armchair; the bastion has been rebuilt in its entirety. She wonders how many perished from exhaustion hauling bricks and mixing mortar.

"Tell me what he saw," he says.

"Exactly what you do," she says, nails burrowing into the leather cover of a hefty tome. "Nothing more."

His confusion is more painful than his anger.

He stares and he stares and he stares.

He claims a seat right in front of her and blocks her path whenever she tries to leave. He conjures a stick of charcoal and rips a page out of her very own book. The story is interrupted. She will never know what happened in the span of a paragraph.

He sketches her exact likeness in silence and then it is the face upon the crumpled parchment that captures his interest.

She hates the heat behind his gaze.

Only then is she allowed to flee.

 

"What became of the people traveling with me?" she asks one evening.

"I had no need of them," Elgar'nan replies, flicking his wrist.

He tuts. Leans forward to readjust her posture. Chin propped up in a manner that is dignified rather than common, as he often says; hair swept over one shoulder; lips parted just a bit, just enough for a suggestion of pearly teeth without a full grin.

He smudges her jaw with charcoal.

She thinks of Solas and wants to scream. She won't stop if she starts. Her vocal cords will rip.

"Shouldn't you be out there fighting whatever war your people are waging?" she asks.

"Stay still," he chides. "Why bloody my hands when they can bloody theirs?" he says, giving her a berating look.

He moves the pieces on the chessboard; the king stays still, he does not step out unless cornered.

"You've bloodied them with me," she whispers.

"I took Halamshiral from Fen'Harel," he says conversationally.

Then she really can't move from the freezing horror in her veins. Halamshiral wasn't even Solas'—he left it to the humans. He did not invade.

"Ma serannas," Elgar'nan murmurs, kissing the knuckles of her single hand. "You are a wonderful distraction."

She can't look at him. She will be sick.

"For the both of us," he says and she can't stand this charade anymore.

She pushes him. She breaks his stick of charcoal like he did her wrist, like his men shattered Hakkon's Wisdom. She trips over herself trying to get away.

 

She flinches when he touches her face. When she goes left, he blocks her escape with an outstretched arm. When she chances the right side, he spins with her and ends up backing her against the wall.

He is too close—too close—and he is going to break her only wrist again—he is going to take the chisel and plunge it into her skin, mark her further—he is going—

He brushes his lips against her cheek and she startles. His mouth chases hers and he nibbles, nips, sucks to get their breaths to mingle, to get a taste of her. It's not quite a kiss. It's the furthest thing from it. She writhes like an eel and at last he steadies her with a hand around her throat.

His thumb rubs lazy circles against her pulse point.

Fire roars beneath her skin, walking the path of her vallaslin, and there is a fog of flames around her mind. Words fail to succeed one another and there is but confusion, so much confusion.

And hatred.

"You are very beautiful," he says.

He nuzzles the spot behind her ear almost affectionately. It's not right. He can't know fondness.

He pops the buttons of her shirt open. He kisses her as someone who hates cannot do.

She watches her clothes fall away one by one, colors and fabrics and once-meager protection reduced to a useless bundle at her feet.

She's never seen his chambers before now. She thinks it would take two complete roll-overs to tumble out of his bed.

But he takes her there and presses words she does not understand to her lips every time she tries to turn away and banish the image of him.

 

"Why do you want me?" she asks.

"I shouldn't," Elgar'nan says.

"That's not quite an answer," she says.

"At least I am willing to give you the truth."

"You make my skin crawl."

"You warm mine."

 

It's easier to do as he pleases.

It's easier to allow him to hook his fingers beneath her jaw and guide her head up.

It's easier to accept his mouth upon hers.

It's easier not to tense up when he comes behind her, to allow her muscles to relax and go pliant, as he hitches her skirts over her hips and bends her over a convenient chair.

It's simply easier for then he is gentle—and isn't that a contradiction to the fearful persona the Dalish invented over the years.

She learns that it is easier when he goes to execute a knight and she merely says, "Is it necessary?"

"Perhaps not," he replies, pensive.

He dislocates his sword arm instead and watches him hobble away.

It's not power, not exactly, but it is something.

 

He gives her a necklace of amber and beryl—the same stones used to construct his mural. It is heavy. It is constricting. She feels like a leashed dog.

It's a pretty, pretty collar.

He unravels her hair from its messy braid and coils it about his hand, a makeshift bun to accentuate her features. With the other hand, and a generous helping of magic, he fastens the necklace around her neck.

 "Solas has Mythal," she says. "You are no match for him."

He doesn't say a word after that. He strips her of her clothes and leaves only the necklace on as he takes her.

He kisses a path down the valley between her breasts. He makes her wrap her legs around him in a mock embrace. As if she's holding on to him. As if she could. As if she'll ever want to.

The white streak in his hair is plastered to his face as he stares down at her, still so hard between her legs.

"I have been alone a very long time," he says, molding the words against her lips.

"You should wither," she says, "you should die."

"You should save your breath when you are being kissed," he says.

He flips her over. Presses a hand to her back until it curbs under the strength and when he enters her from behind it's almost too much. She claws at the sheet with her only hand and scrunches her eyes. He comes after a few short thrusts, her words having seemingly unleashed something within him, and follows her down.

He nips the tip of her ear.

He is still inside her when he speaks. "I will take you with me when I leave for Halamshiral."

"What was the alternative?" she asks, but she doesn't want to know, not really.

Perhaps the pillow swallowed her words. Perhaps he didn't hear her.

"Slay you in front of him," he says, rolling over and taking her with him.

He peels himself from her body only to let his eyes roam shamelessly.

"You shall require a gown," he says, hands trailing from her shoulders and over her breasts before settling on her hips.

His smile is too wide.

"Perhaps something white," he says. "And strings of pearls for your hair."

She feels nauseous. She scurries out of the bed just as dry heaves ravage her insides, his release still warm and slick between her thighs.

She can't stay, she can't. But she doesn't even have magic with him; he's suppressed it too well.

He comes up behind and drapes a robe over her shoulders, humming a forgotten tune. She's gone through worse; she killed dragons; she mended the sky; she fought a corrupted magister and walked away victorious

She seals it all away in the vault inside her head, hoping, always hoping, that it will never overflow.

 

She wakes with the warmth of his body around her. He has one leg between hers and a hand pressing against her lower back, keeping her to him.

He exhales a greeting against her lips just as his hand finds its way between them.

She writhes and squirms and wiggles. She pushes back against him because it can't be like this. It has to be mindless, senseless, detached. Always.

But his fingers work at her and she feels the muscles of her thighs seize and tremble as he drags an orgasm out of her. He chuckles, kissing her nose.

He makes a show of sliding his fingers, wet with her, along her skin.

"You don't have to scream for him anymore," he says. "I've changed my mind. Do it for me."

She vomits when he leaves and tries to invoke a spark of lightning, just one, to shock her heart into stopping.

 

The vault does overflow. She forgets herself at times.

 

It all changes when the grounds around the bastion go up in flames.

She snaps out of some sort of trance. Colors are vivid again.

Through the mosaic windows, she sees Sentinels slip out of stealth and impale Elgar'nan's knights through their armored chests.

She doesn't think. She breaks the window. It takes several blows and by the end blood races in rivulets down her forearm.

She can't think. She can't. She can't.

She jumps. And if she were to break her neck—what then?

The hem of her dress catches on a loose brick and tears. She stumbles. She falls. Glass cuts her bare feet and the grass beneath is soon stained red.

The Sentinels see. They turn, but not long enough to assist. They go back to slaughtering the Knights.

Only one responds and he has his arms around her, dragging her away from the heat of the battle.

She sees the shadow of his vallaslin and smiles.

He sees hers and swallows an onslaught of horror.

"We risked much coming here, but you are safe now. You are safe," Abelas says.

He repeats it time and again. Until she hears him. Until she really, truly sees him.

She laughs. She can't stop. He looks at her as if she's gone deranged—and it's not far from the truth.

She can still feel the chisel. Her wrist will forever ache. Lips that should have never grazed hers have left bruises along the column of her throat.

Abelas holds her very tightly and does not let go.


	2. On Dark Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is all your fault lmao.
> 
> Let it be on record that I am a horrible person.

There is too much blood and glass cuts her feet; the grass is slippery and sharp, so much that she can’t tell whether it is the tendrils or the shards biting at her soles.

“Can you fight?” Abelas asks.

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He pries the morbid staff-sword out of the still-warm hands of a knight he slew. The man still wheezes. He stills bleeds from a deep gash at his throat, but his fingers are weak and let go of the weapon without protest.

Abelas thrusts it at her.

“Take it,” he says.

The staff grip is slick with blood. She curls a hesitant hand around it.

There is no fire.

No frost.

No lightning.

She can’t make the ground tremble or paralyze one with a well-aimed bolt.

“I—I can’t,” she mutters. “It’s something about this place. I can’t do anything. I can’t.”

She thinks she is going to cry.

She stares at him with too-wide eyes.

Abelas swears. He envelops them both with a shimmering sort of barrier, nudging her away from the massacre where bare-faced Sentinels clash with their marked kin.

“You’ve been here too long,” he says. “You’re drained.”

She doesn’t quite know what that means, but he’s already pulling her away.

“I have a horse not too far away,” he says.

His gaze drops, shifts inward. “They’ll be the distraction,” and this time it is whispered.

He doesn’t look back at his men. She thinks he can’t bring himself to.

“We won’t be missed,” he says. “At least not for a while.”

She’s never seen him fight and suddenly is very glad they didn’t go against him at Mythal’s temple. Abelas clears out the way; there is no elegant way to put it. But his arm is trembling and his chest is heaving, and she doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to carry on with her as a burden, focus split.

She doesn’t have to wonder because they don’t make it that far anyway.

The gates of the vestibule leading to the gardens part with shrill creaking; the mechanism is old and rusty and the spells are numerous. It takes a moment to dismantle them all, but a moment is not enough for them.

Elgar’nan is unarmed. He wears no armor. He winces upon stepping into a fresh puddle of blood.

He surveys the scene with something very akin to indifference.

She doesn’t so much hear him as she knows the words leaving his lips. She’s gotten so used to the motions of those; she knows just how they move to shape every vowel.

He reverts to Common, his exasperation betrayed only by the crinkles at his eyes. This warrior was Dalish once, his Elvhen is poor. He must, but he oh so does detest their tongue, she knows.

“He isn’t here,” he says.

“This is useless,” he says.

Whatever poor soul is forced to share the same air with him nods once, solemn, before retreating. Those who hear him follow his lead.

And it’s a sight to behold, if nothing else. His knights scatter. They run. Disperse. They do not finish off the Sentinels. They flee to the safety of the bastion.

And for an instant the air is heavy, the stench of blood thick, and the silence oppressing.

Then the ground is swallowed whole with flames. An inferno rages and it spares not a soul; not even Elgar’nan’s own men, unlucky or too far off to save themselves in time, not Solas’ Sentinels, caught in the disarray and bewilderment of it all.

She smells charred flesh.

She hears the screams of those roasting in their armor.

“That one is a general,” Elgar’nan’s voice carries.

He nods at Abelas. They are so far away, but he sees, he always sees. She thinks Abelas might trip over his own feet.

“The others I do not need,” Elgar’nan says. “Leave them to the ravens.”

There are no ravens this time of the year, she thinks. She feels feverish. Her mind is hazy and thoughts vague, elusive even.

There can’t be ravens.

She thinks she sees the shadow of a bird in a tall oak, but when she blinks it is gone.

Abelas follows her gaze until he’s brought to his knees by a solid blow between the shoulder blades.

 

She doesn’t know how long she paces.

Silence is worse than rage.

She thinks a taste of wrath would be better at this point. Then her wrist aches with a phantom pain and she wants to bash herself over the head with a very heavy rock.

Elgar’nan is in his study and she hesitates before crossing the threshold; the marble of the floor is white here, pristine, and her feet leave bloody, ungainly imprints.

She dares not step onto the carpet.

“Yes?” he says.

He doesn’t turn around, but senses her approach nonetheless. Too engrossed but still not engrossed enough in the admiration of a shifting mural that scales his wall and most of the ceiling.

She waits for him to mock her.

She waits.

He makes a humming sound, contemplative, and taps the mural with two fingers. A cluster of rich purple begins to shift.

“That was not quite what I had in mind,” he finally admits—and she exhales in relief at him breaking the silence—“but it is a step in the right direction.”

“Thank you,” he says, looking over his shoulder at her.

He hums _again_ and turns back to the mural _again_.

“What is that?” she asks.

She doesn’t know why she does. She wants to slit his throat and drag information about Abelas out of him. She wants to burn him alive starting from within, so he is ravaged from the inside out as she is, but all that comes out is this one stupid question.

“A map,” he says. “Fen’Harel is there”—a vague, sweeping gesture along planes of green—“and we are here.”

Grey.

It’s fitting.

There are only shades of grey here.

“And what about purple?” she asks.

“My forces,” he says.

“This is a chessboard,” she says.

“Yes,” he acquiesces, “and I move the pieces at will. But you have seen enough.”

With a gesture—a flick of the wrist that is almost painful to look at now that her own is too stiff to perform it—he darkens the mural. Colors bleed out of the world and not even a meandering sunbeam succeeds in shielding them from a devouring swarm of dull grey.

When he does turn around, there is a crease to his brow.

“Will you kill that man?” she asks, fingers worrying the door frame.

“No,” he says.

And once more she waits.

And once again he gives her nothing.

It’s the not knowing part, she decides, that hurts the most. Thoughts are unrestrained then, cannot be leashed. And hers are particularly wild these days. She thinks of knives and flowing, hot blood and nothingness.

She makes to leave. If that is the only answer she’ll get, she doesn’t want to suffer through _possibilities_ , awful or kind, that silence breeds.

“You should bathe,” he says. “You reek of blood and his sweat.”

He speaks of Abelas and the mere mention of his name makes her want to scream.

“There are no ravens this time of year,” she murmurs. “Will the corpses just rot there?”

“No ravens, da’len,” he echoes and turns his back to her.

 

She does bathe.

She sits in the full tub, knees drawn to her chest, long past the water being lukewarm. She scrubs her skin raw. There are scratches. They well with fresh blood; the surface of the water is tinted pink for the briefest of seconds before remains of soap rush to cloud it.

And she is not quite steady when she rises, when her feet make an awkward little shuffle as she reaches for the soft dressing gown.

She shivers.

Water drips down her back. Her hair is still so damp, so tangled. She should brush the knots out before they become unmanageable, but that would require settling down in front of a mirror.

And look at herself.

At the milky waves and spirals and crescents carved into her skin as if she were a block of marble. Etchings to embellish _something_ that belongs to _someone_ ; much like one would adorn his work with a signature.

Her fingers do the work, blind, threading and sliding.

She pretends she doesn’t hear the door open and then pretends even harder that it isn’t being closed.

There are hands at her waist and she is trying not to shudder.

“This is better,” Elgar’nan says.

The same hands briefly wander up to brush over her shoulders. He pushes her hair back, away, and all she can hear is the rushing of blood in her ears and a distinct little _drip drip drip_ of water.

He sets to undo the sash holding her dressing gown.

She catches his hands—a bit of each, fingers splayed, trying to capture as much as they are able—just as his fingertips graze the skin of her stomach. A flutter of a touch, barely there, but it’s enough for a piece of her to crawl away and wither in some dark corner.

“I am not a whore,” she says.

But, truly, those words should have come sooner.

She should have spat them in his face the first time and all the times afterward. It’s silly, it’s stupid, to say it now, after she’s felt him move against her not once, not twice and not even thrice.

He guides her hand away, holding it at her side.

“Are you going to break my wrist again?” she asks.

He cocks his head, looking down. “I have no desire for a whore,” he says.

But she can hardly believe that when he presses her so hard into the sheets that her ribs whine.

She’s never been this cold.

 

“Come here,” he says.

He rolls her so she is facing him and her vision is still a little hazy from sleep, her eyelids too heavy.

It feels nice to be warm until she remembers.

She sinks her nails into his shoulder, her elbow a defiant barrier between them, as he hooks his fingers beneath her knee and drags her leg up and over his own hip, locking it at his back.

She stares at a distant point past his head, ignoring all. There is no hot breath against her throat and no charcoal hair with a single white streak and certainly no fingers skimming up and down her spine.

“Ellana,” he says.

He smiles a little, relishing the swift return of her focus.

She does look then. Or perhaps he makes her look when he leans in to tug at her lower lip with his teeth. She thinks the distinction hardly matters anymore—not when he has her wrapped around him so tightly that it would take but one roll of his hips to be inside her.

There’s something about this, about the way he’s forcing her to hold on to him rather than simply pinning her down.

He is already pulling her closer, hitching her leg further up, and her heart flutters.

“I can’t access the Fade,” she says.

“I am aware,” he says.

She gasps when he finally slides in, and the gesture brings her chest flush to his. She feels crushed, spine curbing every time he thrusts, and she thinks she might just break. Vertebra by vertebra. She is not a bow to be pulled this taut. Her neck feels stiff; she can’t keep craning it like this much longer, and eventually she allows her head to bow. Lets her forehead rest against the crook of his own neck.

He can’t force her not to scrunch her eyes shut when he can’t see her face.

Small blessings.

Small blessings, she thinks.

She almost doesn’t realize that he’s rolled her onto her back once more.

His hands roam. They move too much.

He does love touching her after they’ve finished, but this feels different.

She watches him angle himself above her, hair falling like a heavy curtain over his shoulder.

“Ah,” he murmurs, somewhat absentminded, conflicted, “this will not do.”

He dislikes frowns; she makes hers more severe, infinitely more pronounced.

His skin is too hot.

He presses a fingertip to her lips, mending the split caused by a shard of glass and worsened by his teeth. Her tongue immediately darts out to soothe the sensation of burning.

“Stop touching me,” she mumbles. It should come out stronger, she supposes. Perhaps even translate into an angry bellow, but it is meek and soft. “You can leave now.”

He doesn’t respond. His hands perform a last sweeping gesture, one that takes them on a journey from her throat and to her knees, before he finally listens.

A sweat breaks out on her forehead. It is but dew, not even a proper sheen, but it shouldn’t be there at all.

“You should rest,” he says.

She releases something akin to a huff into the pillow; a snort and a laugh and a noise of disbelief. There are cruel jests she could throw his way about his age and hers—juvenile and undignified—but it would lead nowhere. He is too quiet and she too trapped.

 

“What is that bracelet you wear?” Elgar’nan asks.

She looks down at the woven strands of tanned leather. “A keepsake from my clan.”

“Give it to me,” he requests.

“No,” she says.

He uses a spark of fire to cut it off and catches it mid-air, deft fingers coiling about it like snakes.

“Fetch me a raven,” he tells a servant.

There are still no ravens. The season isn’t right.

It feels a little like losing her other arm.

He doesn’t have to tell her that he sends it off to Solas; that night the Fade swirls and rebels and wails all around her, but nothing—no one—breaks through.

 

“What does it mean—Inquisitor?”

“It’s a title.”

“A count owns land; a duke vies for his older sibling’s seat; gods lean back and observe. What do Inquisitors do?”

“They close the sky. They kill people like you.”

“Ah, well. The sky is torn open and I am here. The world has no need for Inquisitors any longer, I should think.”

He smiles and she doubts the influence of the laurel given to her a lifetime ago. If it still has any.

 

This is what losing oneself must feel like. There should be more disgust. It should be an avalanche. She should be swallowed whole.

But she only feels oddly empty when he replaces her bracelet with one adorned with dark beryl. Like something stolen from the Deep Roads and hammered into a tinier version of itself; crude but still vaguely resembling itself. Much like she.

“To go with your necklace,” he says.

The one she threw out the window and that mysteriously reappeared on her vanity the morning after.

He hand dangles, a limp and dead thing, as he works the fastenings around her ever-tender wrist.

“I hate it,” she says.

“I quite like it,” he says.

“I don’t understand the markings,” she says. “I won’t wear it.”

It looks like ancient elvhen—it probably is. Some flowery poetry because their ancestors did so enjoy living in a world of purple prose rather than sense.

“Would you like to?” Elgar’nan inquires. “He never gifted you our language, I see.”

She wants to tell him that she’ll dance on the grave of their elvhen glory. That their forgotten past to which the Dalish have clung to is an abomination. She needs no sliver of it, not even a morsel. This age gave her enough. She isn’t greedy. She doesn’t want anything of theirs—of his.

But she also forces herself to see past the fog of hatred and glimpse the opportunity for what it is.

Understanding is knowledge. Knowledge is a measure of power.

She’ll take anything at this point.

“I suppose I do,” she says slowly.

He conjures a wisp of pale light, something that sprouts tendrils that crawl to her mouth and slide along her lips.

She inhales and it rides along with her breath, chasing.

She thinks the rune-like symbols make sense at first—she thinks—she thinks—

But there are too many words in her head and most of them are uttered by unknown voices, high and low, loud and quiet. She seizes the side of her head, wishing she could cover both ears rather than just one, fingers gripping so strongly that hair comes out.

There are whispers. Some of them are hers. Some of them occurred eons ago.

Her mind is aflame.

Elgar’nan’s touch is soothing. He presses his fingers to her temple and drags some of the tendrils out.

The burning subsides.

“You young ones are so fragile now,” he says. “Let’s take this slowly. Take a little instead of a lot.”

Is this what Solas felt when he woke, when he sought to understand them?

She thinks of blue eyes and cheekbones dusted with freckles.

She thinks of _vhenan_ and _ar lath ma_ and how they are no longer mere contextual sounds uttered by those pretending to know a culture that’s long perished.

She thinks of all that and feels warm.

 

She understands some of it. Not a lot.

Just enough.

Just enough to eavesdrop on Elgar’nan’s conversation with Dirthamen when the latter returns.

“You are a disappointment,” Elgar’nan comments, tone ever so even.

“Forgive me,” Dirthamen utters. “I am alone—”

“So was your brother.”

After that all is quiet. She retreats, steps soft with the refined knowledge of one brought up in a forest, before being caught.

She can’t help herself. She smirks at Dirthamen, the Lord of Secrets of their wrongful tales who shares his father’s eyes.

She smirks and his hand balls into a fist at his side.

He wants to strike her, but can’t.

They exchange no words. Only looks.

It is so very satisfying.

 

She vomits. She can’t hold food down, but it doesn’t last long. The nausea is replaced with brilliant pain and she is sweating again; not dew, but buckets.

The first pang is in her stomach, but soon travels lower. Until it is hugging her. Until agony wraps itself around her and sinks its claws into her lower back.

She feels like she is burning from the inside out.

It’s a fever that is too intense.

A healer comes to her, a woman with hair in a crown braid who assists her up.

“My name is Lanaya,” she whispers to her in a tone meant to appease. “I was my clan’s Keeper. I know what I’m doing.”

It doesn’t matter who she is. Her name is but another thing that can rot and shrivel and die. Ellana bites through her lip trying to silence the nasty remarks that always creep to the surface when her temper flares. Her wick has been so short as of late.

She is here and that is enough to warrant hatred.

Ellana thinks she can’t be sweating that badly—her clothes can’t be soaked through already.

But it’s not sweat that’s pooled into her lap. There is blood between her thighs. Dark stains bloom. Blossom. Grow ever larger. When Lanaya pushes her onto her back on the bed, the sheets beneath her have long gone crimson.

“You are going to drink this for the pain,” she says.

It’s not a question. Not even a request.  A mug with some pungent herbal decoction is pressed to her lips; Lanaya gets a hand in her hair and tugs, forcing it back, pouring the liquid down her throat.

“And I’ll take care of the rest—you are too pale as it is,” she finishes.

Lanaya peels the clothes off her lower body. She burns them so she doesn’t have to look at them. It is thoughtful but it is not. It’s not enough. It’s an empty gesture while she still bleeds and bolts of pain continually shoot from her abdomen to her spine.

Ellana curls on her side.

Eventually, some of the burning recedes—either thanks to Lanaya or because she’s just too weak to register it anymore.

He didn’t frown at her that morning because she was frowning back at him.

He didn’t suggest she rest in mockery.

That was not it at all.

It is better this way, she tells herself. It is better. No anchor, no burden, no weight. Only pain—but pain always goes away in the end.

But it wasn’t his choice to make.

 

Lanaya stays for too long. Ellana considers slapping her hand away when she brings her some other brew, except that this one actually smells nice.

In the morning, she gets her new clothes. They are soft and loose and do not restrict.

“Why are you glaring at me?” she asks.

She is unabashed and Ellana thinks she likes that. It’s hard to think; it’s hard to even keep the cup from spilling.

Instead, she averts her gaze.

“You chose to be here,” she says. “It’s clear. You serve a horrible man and that makes you horrible by association.”

“He is one of the Creators,” Lanaya argues.

“He is a monster like the rest of them,” Ellana says.

Except Solas. Solas never hurt. It’s terribly ironic, she thinks, that now that the world’s ended by his hand and tries to crawl out of its ashes, she sees him as a light to reach for.

Everything is known by comparison. It’s an old saying and untrue most of the time. No one should have to know those _comparisons_.

“Give me your hand,” Lanaya says. “You clumsy thing, you undid all of the healing that’s been done to it.”

“That’s because none has been,” Ellana mutters.

She dares a generous gulp, but her throat can’t quite handle it. She sputters. She ends up hacking most of it all over the ruined bed.

Lanaya is quiet. She doesn’t rub her back in some false display of sympathy.

“Oh,” she says simply. “Let me set the bones for you.”

And that, she allows her to do gladly.

The full range of motion does not return, but there is no longer shooting, random pains whenever she curls her fingers or reaches for something.

“He did this,” she tells Lanaya.

A hasty look at the sullied, crumpled, bloodied sheets tossed in the farthest corner of the room. “And that.”

“Oh,” Lanaya says again.

Her face falls.

She recognizes that expression, that flurry of emotions. She’s gone through the same, had her own beliefs crumble to dust in the span of a second.

“For what it’s worth,” Lanaya whispers, “I am sorry about the child.”

“It’s worth nothing,” Ellana says.

Lanaya pours herself a cup and they drink in silence.

 

She doesn’t see Elgar’nan for days and when he finally appears she is in the gardens, face raised to the sun.

He runs a hand through her hair without saying anything, coiling tendrils around bejeweled fingers. She startles and jerks away.

“You will not touch me again,” she says.

And there it is at last—the venom, the spite. The bite she thought lost for good. Her voice doesn’t flee from her lungs; it rushes from her abdomen and it is powerful.

“You are resting,” he says. “That is good.”

“I am going to claw your eyes out if you stay a moment longer,” she warns.

“Rest,” he repeats.

He leaves, hands clasped at his back, and she can’t enjoy the sunlight anymore.

It take three tries for her to stand, knees threatening to fold each time. She steadies herself on a nearby tree and in its foliage eyes of black ice blink back at her before vanishing.

 

Lanaya calls her a stupid girl.

Lanaya gives her a warm cloak with a thick hood and leads her down staircases she’s never seen.

“You are still too pale,” she chides.

“Where are you taking me?” Ellana asks.

“Wards have been undone in the cellar; it only happens if whoever is held there is to be led out,” Lanaya says.

She pushes her against a wall, into the shadows.

“Can he hold his own, your friend?” she asks.

Her heart stammers. Flutters. It does a silly, hopeful dance. The feeling is nearly alien.

Abelas, she thinks, and then his name is the only thing.

“More than,” she says.

Lanaya nods, brows knit in a severe V. “Good,” she says. “Because if he can’t then we’re about to enter a trap. Or a direct death sentence. Both unappealing fates, if you ask me.”

“What did you do?” Ellana whispers.

“I sneaked him a sword, of course,” Lanaya says.

And when they do enter the cellar, blood seeps between the cracks in the ground.

Abelas stands. Disheveled and beaten, but he stands and he stands alone. The three guards have been cut down with precision; nicks here and there, along the major arteries. They bled out in minutes. Their pulse is gone.

He wrenches a staff away from one; plucks the armor off the second. He pulls the straps as far as they’ll go, fastening the plate of obsidian and silverite to his chest.

He keeps both the staff and the sword, sheathing the latter into a leather scabbard hanging from his hip. He will tire from the weight, she thinks, but this isn’t the time for nagging.

“I trust you know where the exit is,” Lanaya tells him. “How fortunate that it also serves as the entrance.”

Abelas nods at her, grim.

He leads the way.

The two guards guarding the gate behind which sunlight has begun to disappear beyond the horizon barely have the time to turn.

He breaks the neck of the one on the right.

Lanaya slips from her side to plunge a knife between the ribs of the one on the left.

They collapse in a farcical tandem, bleeding ragdolls with empty eyes and faces disfigured by dark ink.

“I have no horse for you,” Lanaya says, wiping the dagger clean on her thigh, “so you should run.”

“Not just yet,” Abelas says.

“Are you mad?” she hisses.

Abelas parries her words with equal, if not superior, amount of spite. “I’d be mad to leave like this, allowing his hounds to easily track us down.”

“No,” he says. “I will overwhelm him.”

“We were not distraction enough,” he whispers, and this time it’s to himself, his grief rising to the surface to contort his features. “Perhaps this will be.”

“Step back,” he advises.

“What are you doing—“ Ellana begins, but never finishes.

He rests his palms flat against the foundation of the bastion. He splays his fingers. He casts. Ice—frost—so much cold. It finds the tiniest of cracks to burrow there.

He allows the frost to bloom. To settle over the wall like a shroud.

Before he casts lightning and that alone disrupts all the layers.

It all breaks.

It all comes down.

Ice fractures stone and the foundation can’t withstand the shock. The house of cards folds; mortar is ground to powder; bricks are set loose.

The collapse of one wall triggers the fissuring of the second and soon it, too, begins to crumble under its own weight. Destruction scales the disintegrating foundation, rushing to the roof.

She hopes that it won’t be able to withstand the assault. She hopes it breaks and buries all those beneath.

She hopes Elgar’nan gets his skull crushed like an egg.

“Now we can leave,” Abelas says. “This ought to keep him occupied a minute longer.”

“That was not subtle,” Lanaya remarks.

She fidgets. She is restless. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, a rabbit about to take off.

“Subtlety isn’t the key here,” Abelas says. “Are you coming?”

There is an instant where Lanaya hesitates. Her body leans in, but she pulls back at the last minute. She shakes her head, a sorrowful kind of smile settling on her lips.

“I go that way,” she says, “and you take off into the forest.”

“Carry her,” she says, nodding at Ellana. “At least a while. Our feet are the same size. They’ll find two trails and which one do you think they’ll be quick to follow?”

Abelas doesn’t protest—he never argues against logic. He picks her up too quickly and she wraps her arm around his neck; it hurts to be in this position, so curled up, and she thinks she might start bleeding again, but that’s not something that can matter at the present.

Lanaya is gone before she can tell her she doesn’t hate her.

 

Abelas finally puts her down once they reach a shallow spring deep in the forest. His arms tremble from the effort, muscles jump beneath skin.

“Walk in the water,” he orders.

There are so many things she wants to tell him, but nothing would ever be enough.

All she can offer him is, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“We should have never come here,” he says.

He doesn’t look at her with anger. It’s like he finally sees her because the same horror as when he glimpsed her vallaslin returns.

“Don’t pity me,” she snaps. It comes out too harsh. Too quickly. She can’t correct her tone.

“You wear silks but there is no blood to your cheeks. You can barely stand,” he says. “What’s happened to you?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she whispers.

She kicks a small rock out of the water. It’s flat enough that it pounces a little before sinking anew.

Abelas’ lips part. He is going to ask again, she knows, and that can’t happen. She can’t handle pity. Not his. Especially not his.

He loses his voice when she glowers.

“Perhaps you are right,” he decides. “We must get out of the Emerald Graves. There are too many trees; too many eyes; too many ravens.”

The now familiar confusion returns. She stares at the dying sunlight streaming through the foliage.

“It isn’t the season for ravens,” she murmurs.

“Dirthamen has called back Fear and Deceit,” Abelas says, “and they've brought their flocks.”

The eyes of glass blink at them from the trees, intangible and dark. Suddenly there are too many and she sees them all as they trail after them.

In the distance, a raven croaks.


	3. Stone Eyes Weep

The birds follow.

None of them are silent; they’ve forsaken subtlety in favor of speed. There is no ruffle of feathers, no song in the morning, no scraping of talons against weathered bark. They perch upon a crooked branch and watch with eyes of black ice, intangible, dim, not quite shadows but not truly corporeal either. Bodies blend into one another, so close they sit, and there is no telling whether it is a flock or one great, bleeding mass of darkness.

They’ve long ceased blinking.

And she is no longer walking in water.

Abelas throws sidelong glances her way whenever he thinks her distracted. The first time she thinks him gazing over her shoulder, at the second she twists her neck to meet him, and at the third she simply quickens her pace to get away.

It’s getting annoying.

Finally, he abandons all pretenses and simply presses the back of his hand to her forehead before she can swat away his concern.

“You’re running a fever,” he declares.

“I am not,” she says and immediately proceeds to get her foot caught on an overgrown root and plummet face first into the grass.

But her hair is plastered to her forehead at any time of day and every single muscle of her body aches with a pain seemingly out of nowhere. It’s hard to argue when her own breath burns as it whistles through her teeth, but she thinks she does a decent job at it.

Abelas sighs.

He hauls her up with arms hooked beneath her own.

“Sit,” Abelas bids. “Let me rid you of this wretched thing,” he says, surveying the whorls of her vallaslin.

It’s a welcome respite when he makes her sit; she pretends she doesn’t need it.

Abelas cups her face between his large palms, and in comparison his skin is nearly cool though he is the one with too many layers of armor that was never meant to fit him.

“You know how to do this,” she remarks.

“Yes,” he says. “Fen’Harel taught me—I assisted him with the others.”

She nods. “But you didn’t help yourself.”

He averts his eyes; he can’t look at her for too long and that, too, provokes some kind of pang in her chest.

“Serving Mythal,” he begins, cuts himself off, gives a shake of the head before resuming, “serving Mythal, it was no servitude.”

“I understand,” she drawls, voice unnecessarily languid, vowels dragged out. She doesn’t even really hear herself until a moment after.

She thinks she does understand. At least a little. Not a lot. Her very own was a choice borne out of aesthetical, silly reasons. It framed her eyes nicely, she remembers thinking. She was never terribly devout, never truly pious. A blasphemy by Dalish standards, surely, and so it was also a mark of belonging as much as a symbol of pride at having proven herself.  And Elgar’nan’s was only ever… Heraldry, she supposes would be the right term. She didn’t choose the pale ink and she didn’t choose the chisel that was dipped into it.

But to Abelas it is more, even if he is from a bygone time when the true meaning wasn’t lost.

He tries to erase the markings. That much can be said with certainty. She feels his magic burrow and claw and shred its way to the ink, but always falling just a little short, always crashing against walls that are a tad too tall.

And it hurts. Fire follows the pattern of the curlicues and her face is scorched, bleeding by places.

She gasps between his palms, nearly shoving him before remembering herself.

Abelas sputters apologies. He touches her again, this time his touch lighter than a feather, and heals the burns in his own clumsy way.

“I can’t,” he says, “I am very sorry, I can’t. I recognize it now. These are the markings he put on priests and all those with even a hint of talent—he suppressed displeasure before it turned to revolt. I cannot do anything about this, but Fen’Harel will help you.”

She nods and he stares. She supposes she must appear very apathetic.

“You will not have any magic until they are gone,” Abelas says.

It’s like he’s trying to provoke her. Invoke some kind of emotion other than this profound lethargy.

But she has to lean against trees when he’s not watching and wipe sweat from her brow before it trickles down her nose.

She can’t give him much more.

 

It is still early, by trekking standards, when they stop for the night.

“We ought to make camp,” Abelas says.

“Of course,” she says.

They could still walk an hour or two. The sun is not completely down; it peeks yet from beyond the horizon.

When she comments upon it, he gives her nothing but a leisurely roll of the shoulder. As if he doesn’t care. As if he truly meant to stop.

He ignores her—or perhaps makes as if he didn’t hear—when she suggests they just rest a moment instead.

“At least we’re out of the giants’ territory,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “I hoped we’d have reached Villa Maurel by now, but perhaps it is best we avoid it.”

It’s idle talk, at this point. None of them truly care whose territory they’re in as long as it’s out of Elgar’nan’s way.

Abelas doesn’t speak as he plucks the elfroot blossoms around him. He leaves to go forage behind some trees and while he is out of view, she rests her head on a log and sees stars behind her eyelids.

When he returns, it seems he’s found yarrow and he mashes the herbs together with a flat stone. It’s all thrown into whatever they have that serves as a mug as he fills it with water from him wineskin. He heats the water with a spark of fire before thrusting this—whatever it is—at her.

“Take this for the fever,” he says. Then, after she wrinkles her nose, adds as if in way of apology, “I am not a talented healer.”

She takes it, fingers spasming wildly. Says, “I don’t have a fever.”

Her throat constricts on the first gulp, but the second goes down easily. She doesn’t really register the taste, but that hardly matters.

They should move. They have to move. She can tell Abelas wants to go. He wants to run and he _can_ run, but she can’t even make her way across a gap she previously would have leaped over. Abelas hauls all the weight and Abelas holds her hand when her knees begin to fold. She can’t pretend that she isn’t slowing him down, not when she has to soak the hood of her cloak every time they find a bubbling spring so it soothes her burning scalp—if only for a minute.

“I don’t have a fever,” she repeats.

She begins to rise. She pushes herself off the ground, but he catches her by the shoulders before she’s halfway up and shoves her back down. Perhaps a bit too harshly.

“Then consider it a supplement for the upkeep of an otherwise pristine state of health,” Abelas snaps.

She doesn’t argue anymore. They make camp.

 

Abelas can’t stay awake forever, but he waves her off. He allows her to believe that he wants to take first watch; that, later on, it will be an accident when he’ll let her sleep an extra hour or two.

The Fade has been silent for so long, her access to it either completely broken or limited, that when she sees something other than dull nothingness it is almost a shock.

But then there is a form, a solid body, tangible and real. So very real.

It has to be Solas, she thinks.

It has to be.

And she is perhaps a bit too hasty, a bit too impatient, when she nearly trips over her own feet trying to reach him.

She wants to crash into him. She wants to embrace him from behind and lock her arms around him, a prison of flesh and bone. Here, she has two hands that are unhurt and both so very strong.

But it is not Solas and she should have twirled on her heels before running. Should have picked another corner of this reflection of the world to race toward.

Elgar’nan catches her wrist before she can flee. He only holds her there, rubbing circles into her skin.

“On dhea’lam,” he greets her, voice soft.

She doesn’t speak, but he is not too concerned about that. There is something odd about him, something out of place. Something difficult to pinpoint.

He looks at her, but then his gaze shifts inward. It wanders.

He is unfocused.

Confusion does not become him.

He touches her. Fingertips skimming the warm center of her palm and trailing up the veins of her forearm; hands gliding over her shoulders before encountering hair; fingers catching on knots and losing themselves in tangled waves.

He tilts her head back. He stares. Her neck feels stiff.

She scowls. Her frown is so severe it must have contorted her features into a grimace. It doesn’t really matter here, she tells herself.

It’s not a matter of debate—none of this is true.

But her wrist aches with a phantom pain and she can’t bring herself to push him away. Not even here.

Not even here.

“I considered setting hounds loose to track your scent,” he admits. “But that would have been self-serving and foolhardy. Impulsive.”

She snorts.

She huffs.

She almost rolls her eyes.

She feels the corners of her mouth curl downward. Everything he does is self-serving; he can’t be so blind as to believe otherwise.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks.

He doesn’t respond. He only hums. That damned tune that knows no lyrics, a rumble deep in his throat, a breathy whisper, an exhale of hot air which crashes likes waves against her skin when he leans in too close.

“I dislike losing things,” he says. “It unsettles me.”

She grips his own wrists then. She dares. It’s just enough pressure, just enough force, to keep him if not at arm’s length then at least far enough so the tip of his nose fails to brush against hers.

“I am not a thing,” she says.

She is proud of herself, in a juvenile kind of way; proud of the spite and the venom and the tone she musters.

And she finally understands the look in his eyes. She thinks she can read him—just this once, just for a second.

He doesn’t want _to want_ to be here.

“No, you are not,” he agrees. “Whatever shall we call you?” he muses, but he’s not really waiting for her to answer.

One hand slides free of her hair to cradle her jaw; he moves her head from side to side in mock contemplation.

“Da’assan?” he suggests. “But you do not hunt, not truly.”

She’s never owned a bow. She is no arrow, little or not.

“Da’lath’in?” he murmurs, and this time the word is breathed against her skin. He presses his lips against hers, a ghosting touch bestowed upon each corner of her mouth. “But you are not little.”

It is wrong. The word heart should never be spoken by him. His lips shouldn’t know its shape.

“Da fenlin?” And now he is mocking her. Little wolfling, he says twice and then thrice, always teasing, always walking that fine line. He pulls back just a bit, just enough to allow her to glimpse the crinkles at his eyes that deepen in improvised mirth. “But that would be trite, simply droll, considering—”

He laughs to himself. He laughs against her parted lips, making his breath hers. And he’s wound himself so tightly around her that there is only him. He is an overwhelming presence, just as he’s always been. She tastes and feels and smells—only him, him, him. The hot slide of his tongue that’s somehow found her own; the biting grasp of his fingers, at her scalp and at her side. He gathers fistfuls of her skirt and gives her thigh a lingering caress.

When he releases her, it is almost too sudden. There is too much strain in her body; loosened, she goes slack. Staggers. Stumbles.

“Da’mi,” he decides, swiping his thumb over her lips. “Willful and stubborn and effective. It is fitting, I think.”

He flicks his wrist at her and it appears she’s been dismissed.

He clasps his hands at his back. He doesn’t reach for her anymore.

Little blade, he calls her.

Little blade, he calls her and chuckles to himself.

“Run back to your wolf, little blade,” he says. “I believe we’ve tormented him enough. I will not chase; you have free passage.”

His gaze wanders once again; he fixates on a point past her shoulder and his tone is so very even when he does speak.

“However do you fare? You were so unwell when you left,” he says. He smiles. Only once. It’s brief. Ephemeral. She’s not even sure she catches sight of it; perhaps she blinked and it distorted the view.

Her own hand crawls to her throat just as an irrational thought crosses her mind. She wishes her nails were claws, she wishes she could nick her own jugular right about now.

“How can you even ask?” she whispers. “You did it—you killed it—you can’t—”

There are no right words. She feels oddly empty. This little thing that is long gone, that was never wanted, that was not even a knowledge until it was no more than blood upon sheets—she doesn’t mourn it, not quite, not really, but it—she—he—whoever it would have been deserved better.

“The sun will rise soon,” he comments.

She stares as he walks away.

This is not benevolence. It can’t be.

 

She wakes gasping. Across their sorry camp, Abelas’ head snaps in her direction. He is alert and watching as she worries the earth at her feet in an attempt to ease her mind, to lift this haze.

“He promised us safe passage,” she mumbles, voice thick with sleep, when his mood darkens and sours the air around them.

“Do not believe a word, Ellana,” he says too quickly.

“Of course,” she whispers.

He snaps his fingers at her. He actually does it. He even makes a flame dance at the very tips of his fingers to draw her attention.

“Not a word,” she repeats.

“I am not that stupid,” she says.

“But you are that sick,” he says. “Will you still not tell me what happened?”

She’d much rather turn her back to him and keep silent until morning.

 

The monotony is broken when they come across a group of traveling Dalish. They are free and that much is evident—vallaslin of the entire pantheon succeed one another. A face for Sylaise and one for June; another for Falon’Din and of course so many for Mythal. They chose out of piety and outdated customs, none were forced into wearing the markings. The Keeper is a quiet, fidgety man. He shakes their hands with both of his.

“We are bound for the Dirthavaren,” he says. “You are welcome to travel alongside us.”

They are going toward Solas.

“Yes,” she breathes. Yes, yes, yes. She wishes to shout it from literal rooftops and murmur it into straw-stuffed pillows she knows each aravel to have.

But Abelas is wary and he trails behind the group. He’s never had much appreciation for the shadows of this modern age, but this vigilance feels different. Haughty and distant and proud, she remembers him to have been at Mythal’s temple—and now he is acting very much the same.

She turns away from him with a huff.

A young woman catches up to her. Ellana knows she’s been eying her for a while, the both of them being the only ones around roughly the same age. When she does match her stride to hers, she slides her arm with fluid ease through Ellana’s.

“He’s quiet, your friend,” she comments.

“Very,” Ellana says, resisting the urge to make a one-eighty just to glare at Abelas some more. These are good people and he is acting the jackass without reason.

It isn’t long before Liara—she chirps her name more than she says it, her voice a lilt—catches on. She can only pause for breath so many times before it becomes suspicious.

“Oh, I know this,” Liara says without too much concern. She squeezes her clammy palm and grins. “You can share my aravel tonight.”

“Thank you,” Ellana murmurs.

It means much more than the girl will ever understand. To be able to bury her face in the timeworn quilt and inhale its earthy scent with only a suggestion of sweat; to glimpse the world through the bright sails and curtains of the aravel; to steal bits and morsels of the mundane everyday reality she’s left behind the day the Anchor was seared into her palm.

Liara brews her tea. It smells very much like Lanaya’s decoction and a knot forms in her throat; it’s a while before she can drink easily, but the taste is pleasant and it goes down easily.

“You’ll be fine,” Liara says, “just fine.”

She stretches out at her side and talks. And talks and talks and talks. Of everything and nothing. Of the furs the clan lacks to make it safely through winter and of the wildflowers that bloom only in the Free Marches.

Ellana thinks she’s been starved for company, for a new face, for a story that hasn’t been told a thousand times before.

Ellana tells her of the Conclave and while she listens it’s all right, everything really is just fine.

 

The birds come and this time they aren’t silent.

When trees grow sparse, they resort to circling. They swoop in too low and take off into the air again. There are too many of them; she can’t even begin to discern individual bodies anymore. It is but one swirling, swishing, whirling mass that cannot be grazed without having one’s hand pass right through it.

Liara cracks her knuckles and pulls at her collar.

It is the last moment of peace.

The birds plunge—they have no real bodies, they do not plummet. They are blades cutting swiftly through the air and then through the chests, lungs, ribcages of the Dalish. A whirlwind of talons and beaks that delve into flesh and find their way out on the other end.

Blood barely has the time to froth at Liara’s mouth before her legs collapse underneath her, a crimson stain blossoming on her abdomen. The raven rests in the fist-sized wound as if it were its nest, blinking furiously.

It contemplates. It thinks. It sees no more in need of butchering and slowly, methodically, arduously begins pecking at Liara’s warm corpse. Gore does not stick to its feathers; blood does not drip from its body of smoke and spirit essence.

The greedy ground aspires to gulp down all of the blood—a feverish part of her mind notes that grass will grow tall here next year, worms will feast well.

The bright sails of the aravels cannot compete with the drenched bodies being slowly reduced to a pulp.

Then, just as quietly, the birds rise. Two flocks merge into one; they converge, circling one another.

First, she sees an arm. It reaches through the swarm and it parts for him.

Dirthamen steps through.

Two of the larger birds settle on his shoulders. They are not ravens, not hawks, not even falcons. They are bits and pieces and slivers of everything and nothing, mashed together into abominations with differing eyes—one has onyx in its gouged sockets while the other bears bright amethysts. They cock their heads just as Dirthamen does his, a sickening kind of tandem.

She has to hold on to Abelas to remain upright or she will fall and soak up all the blood. Fall right next to Liara, right next to her—

Ellana shakes her head. She does it too strongly and then there’s a dull throbbing behind her eyes.

“You have safe passage,” Dirthamen says.

He is so quiet. So composed. His voice is a monotone that knows no rise or fall in tone. She strains to hear him at all.

“These people were not dangerous, they weren’t enemies,” she whispers, horror rising like bile at the back of her throat.

“I care not for you or your sentimentality,” Dirthamen says. “I do as I was bid—I clear the way and nothing more.”

He turns away from them.

He vanishes just as he appeared.

But he leaves his ravens and they peck mindlessly at the bodies that are still warm but already mutilated beyond recognition.

Abelas rubs the small of her back as she kneels and retches into the butches, his own hand failing not to tremble.

The aravels stay with their owners.

They move on.

 

They day they reach the Exalted Plains is the day she sees riders with bare faces. They wear no emblem and their clothes are unremarkable, but beneath all of that she sees the familiar look. The steel of their eyes is unmistakable.

They are Solas’ men.

They are Solas’ men and they do not hesitate to pull her atop a horse.

She feels herself nodding off, but the rider’s arms are strong around her; she can allow herself to lose the rigidity in her spine, she can close her eyes and not fear re-opening them.

The ride is long, but then she understands why.

Solas has commandeered Citadelle du Corbeau for his own. Behind a warded bridge with a stretch of iced water beneath; behind walls mended with magic; behind the ancient elvhen defenses that have been activated once again and unleash a whirlwind of fire and blaze without pause; past all of that, he remains unreachable.

She understands why he refused to move—why he is still even now.

This is not a place that can be besieged; she doubts it can even be breached.

A suffocating type of barrier envelops them as they ride through the courtyard, shielding them from the inferno of the defense mechanism that got so many of Celene’s troupes stranded once.

Something in Abelas changes as they near the gates. She can see poorly contained emotions; his hands tremble and he can’t steady them even after gripping the reins so tightly the leather rubs his skin raw.

“None of this is your fault,” he says as he rides past her.

She reaches out to him, aiming to grasp his sleeve, wanting to stop him from—whatever this is.

But he is already too far ahead. Already dismounting. Already turning to face the man who comes down the stairs to greet them.

She hears the clink of metal, the clatter of gauntlets and reinforced boots, before she sees him. Solas wears the skin of Fen’Harel, but he’s misplaced his mask. He is entirely too distraught.

He stares.

He stares.

He stares and he can’t stop. She feels herself burn under his gaze, but it doesn’t hurt. Not this time.

She doesn’t quite know what she expected of ancient Sentinels newly in service of the Dread Wolf.

She certainly doesn’t expect Abelas to shove Solas so hard it causes him to stagger.

“Dirthara-ma,” Abelas hisses at him. He looks ready to spit in his face.

“None other came back,” Abelas says.

“This world needed no mending,” he ends, showering him with a look of pure disdain. “All of this is your doing.”

He stalks past him and Solas’ head hangs low.

“Will you allow him to speak to you thus?” a voice inquires. It flows more than it carries, leaving the lips of a pale-haired woman with eyes the color of frost. She rests her head upon the nape of Abelas’ newly-deserted horse and caresses the animal with languid, senseless strokes.

The words are in Elvhen and her mind is slow to translate them, but the general meaning floats to the forefront of her mind and Common fills in the gaps.

“I do not correct those who are right,” Solas says. His control almost flees, he almost snaps at the woman, his jaw set already so tight.

But he remembers himself.

And then he remembers her.

He helps her off the horse in silence.

She hits him across the face—her knuckles crack, whine, and it is so delicious—before she allows him to draw her into the circle of his arms.

 

Solas wipes the vallaslin from her features. It burns, but leaves no marks. The instant the last of the ink flees her veins, her magic rushes back. She feels like a vessel filled to the brim; there is frost and fire and yes, yes, even lightning.

She causes the curtains to go up in flames and laughs as Solas snuffs out the spell.

She freezes the water in her bathtub without meaning after dipping her hand in it to test the warmth, and then there is a giant slab of ice with nothing to do in her room.

She shocks Solas hand while he absentmindedly strokes the back of hers and relishes the surprised sound escaping his lips.

“You are like a child with a toy,” the white-haired woman comments upon catching her laughing to herself one morning—Ghilan’nain, Ellana’s learned.

She wanders the halls of Citadelle du Corbeau aimlessly, speaking rarely and sighing often.

“Do not take it to heart,” another woman, tall and straight like an arrow, advises—Sylaise. She speaks words that are meant to reassure, but none of it makes it to the amber spark of her eyes. She wields a very, very thick mask of porcelain and there are no cracks to sink nails into. Her voice is deep and dry, a resting whip.

“She is unwell,” Sylaise continues, embracing Ghilan’nain around the shoulders to steer her away.

 

And then she discovers that Leliana and some of her people are present as well. They’ve reached Solas when she failed to—this is not a small blessing.

It is a great one.

She feels unsure only at first.

But then she presses herself against the warmth of her body, the suddenness of it knocking Leliana’s hood off. Her bright hair tickles her cheeks.

“There are nugs even here,” she says, gently patting the top of Ellana’s head. “Would you like to see a new litter?”

Ellana never really cared for nugs.

She cares very much now.

 

They don’t kiss. There is still too much hurt between them, but Solas holds her hand and braids her hair. Little gestures. Familiarity lost over the years regained in small doses.

He doesn’t speak of war efforts and she doesn’t speak of what’s happened.

When he steps in to heal her, disbelief turns to fright turns to horror upon his face. He feels the hurts and where they stem from.

He has to turn away and focus on the blinding light streaming from the mosaic window.

She thinks he is going to be physically sick.

She watches the stretching sunbeam with him until it fails to cut through the glass and falls into the courtyard.

She grazes his shoulder and thinks he will shatter from the touch. He is like stone beneath her fingers.

“Would you like to read?” she asks softly.

“Anything you like,” he answers, voice hoarse.

She catches sight of his red-rimmed eyes for but a second as he stands to go add a log to the hearth before it dies out. The soft crackle of fire fills the room—and then it is joined by the occasional shuffle of paper as he flips through the pages of a dog-eared tome.

He still licks his fingertips to anchor the vellum, she notices. There is a fondness in her chest that blooms into something big, something so, so foolish upon discovering the habit hasn’t died out with the nondescript persona of the hedge mage he once was.

The next time he ends a paragraph, she weaves their fingers together.

Her tongue darts out, tasting the salt of his skin.

She exhales a breathy, incoherent laugh against him.

She thinks he does the same when the hair at the back of her head is ruffled.

But it’s so subtle that it is hard to tell.

 

“You were right,” he says.

She watches his fingers drum a staccato against the mahogany of the study.

“I wanted to change your mind so much,” she admits, “but I think it’s too late now.”

“Perhaps,” he whispers, avoiding her gaze.

 

Something within Solas crumbles.

She catches him arguing with Leliana and it’s perhaps the loudest she’s ever heard him. Composure has long slipped off Leliana’s features; she is no better.

“No,” she says. “You will not have the Inquisition’s forces—not for this.”

“What is happening?” Ellana asks. She invades the space between the two before claws come out and eyes are lost.

“This is no longer strategy,” Solas snaps back at her. “We aren’t staying behind walls waiting for the right opportunity—there will be none. We must make one ourselves.”

“Here, you are unreachable,” Leliana argues. “All he’s done is try to draw you out because he knows he can’t hold ground here. Don’t be daft.”

“Yes,” Solas echoes, “All he’s done.”

He looks at her as he speaks those words and she feels the urge to grip him by the collar like some disobedient dog. To shake him, shake this madness out of him.

After everything.

After everything she went through.

Leliana is right—he can’t be that daft.

“I have granted your men safety,” Solas says. “They will not be welcome here once I return if they do not join me.”

“I have the numbers,” he mutters to himself.

“I have Mythal,” he whispers.

She considers striking him again because this is blackmail. He already has so much and yet is demanding more.

“This is not you,” she says, forcing softness into her tone, “you do not give in to provocation.”

“If all of that were enough, you wouldn’t have stayed behind tall walls,” she says.

His eyes go wide.

You would have come for me yourself, she thinks.

And that is a pang that hurts more than an infinity of others—she forces it down, locks it in her vault along with delusions and fantasies and other foolish things.

It’s not the time for that.

“I cannot stay behind walls any longer,” he says. “Come what may.”

This is exactly what Elgar’nan wanted—he gambled, sacrificed a few pawns, but ultimately cornered the king at the opposite end of the chessboard.

“You are a moron,” she says.

She doesn’t follow and he doesn’t change his mind.

 

They meet halfway through the Exalted Plains where trees are thick and the ground is blanketed in grass rather than odd patches here and there.

Solas works the fastenings of her armor himself. He pulls them in as far they’ll go. He succumbs to some fit of sentimentality and presses his lips to her forehead and just holds them there.

“I wish you would ride back,” he says.

“Please,” he adds.

But it doesn’t undo her. She still welcomes the warmth of his mouth and the brief safety his embrace offers. Let it be an indulgence, she thinks, a selfish one. Perhaps the last.

“You took my Inquisition to fight your fight,” she says. “I can’t not be here.”

“I understand,” he says.

He does and it’s the first time in years she’s feeling like they’re equals.

He’s kept her men at the back, at least. He bids her to retreat, to join the other mages at a safe distance—it is strategical, tactical. He is right, of course. She finds herself spurring her horse on and falling into step with Abelas.

He has a thick staff fashioned out of sylvanwood.

She wields Fade-Knocker, something plucked from a wyvern’s nest and given to Solas a lifetime ago. He looked a little sheepish when transferring it back into her care, the gesture betraying a burst of nostalgia and yearning he never quite managed to quell.

“I don’t abhor your people,” Abelas says.

“Thank you,” she says, “that’s nice to know.”

He huffs.

She huffs back.

It’s nice.

 

Sylaise has a small army, but Ghilan’nain is terrifying in an entirely different way.

She constructs life out of nothing. She pieces broken, bleeding horses that can no longer run with harts that have fallen from a first hailstorm of arrows. Her beasts rip through flesh and armor; they trample archers and sink teeth that should not be there, that should not be this sharp into exposed necks; but ultimately they fall to the swarm of Dirthamen’s ravens.

She watches Ghilan’nain scramble. None dare approach her, but she grips her temples like mad and backs away from the battle.

Sylaise rides up to block her escape.

Ghilan’nain leans against the horse, whispering nonsense into its flowing mane. The animal whinnies—whines—cries—it grows antlers that do not belong and has them fall off within the span of a second, blood spurting from the uneven breaks in elongated bone and stretched skin.

“He will forgive us if we go back now,” she mutters. “He will be merciful.”

“We can’t,” Sylaise says simply, and forces the woman on the wounded horse behind her.

It doesn’t matter how many people Solas petrifies, how hard he makes the ground shake. He cannot be everywhere at once.

Inquisition forces go down first; they were always the weakest link.

The ravens make short work of them and then there is nothing but madness and folly in the very middle of the field. Horses left without riders go wild; they slam into foes and allies alike, hoofs shattering bones of already-broken bodies; if anyone remains breathing, they are crushed by animals driven insane.

She can’t hear.

She can hardly see.

She drops to her knees and hopes she doesn’t get trampled.

There is a shield nearby and she pries it out of stiff fingers, drags it over herself, and casts a barrier as well.

The birds descend. They peck. They claw. The horses circle.

She feels claustrophobic.

The world has been reduced to flashes of color; a flipbook with too few pictures that unravels behinds her eyelids.

The first splinter in her barrier causes a chain reaction; it begins to fracture. She gasps until she is light-headed, struggling against the projectiles crashing against the shield drawn over her back and the birds pecking at the thinning air around her.

The shield is wrenched out of her grasp—she doesn’t have enough strength to hold on to it with a single hand.

She only glimpses the scaling vines of Mythal’s vallaslin before someone hauls her to her feet.

Abelas is soaked in blood. His mount barely stands, bleeding rivers from every cut. It will rear any second now and throw him off.

Perhaps he speaks. She can’t hear him. She can’t hear anything.

His arm strains, nearly giving out, as he hauls her up.

She doesn’t care if she crushes his ribs.

She wraps her arm around his middle and does not let go.

They break out of the crazed middle and she finally sees what their forces have been reduced to. Spread thin. Scattered. Separated. Uncoordinated.

“I am afraid,” Abelas confesses.

And hearing him utter those words is what finally makes her afraid too.

 

A raven has pecked through her shoulder and she’s dropped her staff twice already by the time it is all over.

She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to retrieve if off the ground a third time.

Elgar’nan burns everything—everyone.

It is all cries of unprecedented, horrifying pain and scent of charred flesh.

He has to weave through a morbid garden of stone statues of his warriors before he is able to reach Solas.

He isn’t bloodied.

There is but one scratch along the silverite lining of his gauntlet.

“You’ve come out of your hole,” he says.

“I am sure she begged you not to,” he says, throwing her a glance and a smile. “She is smart.”

“But you’ve always had a weakness for instant gratification,” he finishes.

He doesn’t allow Solas to speak. As he grips him by the throat a wave of power rolls over the field, knocking anyone still standing down.

She sees stars when her skull collides with the ground.

She doesn’t know where her staff is anymore.

She sits on her haunches and that’s it, she can’t do much more than that. There is blood in her mouth and a profound exhaustion that threatens to morph into apathy. The tunic beneath her armor is soaked with sweat and the blood from her shoulder; she feels it cling to her breasts and belly.

She doesn’t know where Abelas is. Where anyone is.

There is but Solas and the dimming light in his eyes that is Mythal. Elgar’nan is trying to pry it out of him like he attempted to drag the vir’abelsan out of her.

As she thinks of the Well of Sorrows, it slowly rouses from a slumber that’s gone on for too long. The voices say nothing. They do not advise or chide.

They slowly creep out of her mind, away from the confines of her body, a vessel that was always too little.

She releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding; a stone drops from her chest. She feels light, soft, empty in the most blissful of ways. Cuffs she’s accepted but never quite understood the weight of unclasp from her wrist, her neck, every part of her.

The vir’abelasan flees, but it doesn’t abandon.

It rushes into Solas.

And for a moment, for just one, his eyes glow so very bright.

The remains of Mythal do leave him, but they are not taken—they assault, they ravage, they are not things to be taken and passed around.

Elgar’nan’s eyes know the same light.

His lower lip splits down the middle.

He doesn’t bleed. He never did.

His wrist knows no more fluidity.

He remains as he was when gripping Solas. Straight, tall, proud—but he is stone and stone shatters when enough force is applied. He is but another statue with dead eyes.

That is how gods fall, she thinks feverishly. They fail to look over their shoulder and are thwarted by dumb luck.

She wants to laugh until her lungs burst.

Solas turns around. He is distraught, pale. He looks at her, at those who remain, and it’s like he dares not take a step back toward his brethren, woken Sentinels and allied Evanuris alike.

She understands then.

There is no more Mythal—he has nothing. He is nothing. He has no leverage.

“Can you be Solas now?” she asks, sounding a little deranged, feeling even more so. Her voice must be tinged with insanity.

Just Solas and no one, nothing, else. With no mantle to weigh him down or centuries-old guilt to force his hand into action.

“I do not think I have a choice,” he murmurs.

He pulls her to her feet. He rests his chin on her shoulder and holds her like a lifeline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is entirely too long. Ugh. But it's not the type of story I can chop into small chapters.
> 
> Anyway, this is the *official* ending, although I will be most certainly writing an Elgar'nan pov because I am horrible and enjoy writing the psychology of horrible characters. Also I'm considering writing an alternate ending where everything goes wrong aka everyone suffers; unless that sounds like too much pain, in which case warn me and I won't lmao.


	4. Alternate Ending: In the After Only Small Things Matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is basically the everything goes wrong alternate ending with a side of SassySeeker's request that 'Ellana stays with Elgar'nan despite knowing he's no sunshine and rainbows.'
> 
> All the usual warnings for depressive and morally wrong/ambiguous/conflicting stuff.

He goes down too easily.

She doesn’t want to watch, but this isn’t something one can tear their eyes from. He is a house of cards collapsing upon itself; a statue of marble that finally fractures after water gets into the hairline fissures; a last glimmer of grey that is so very sweet, so very soft and blue in the right light. Then, he is simply nothing.

Tendons go taut in his neck. The white of his eyes turns dull, becomes grey. His fingers still, forever frozen in a flexing motion.

He has a deep gash running up his jaw, she thinks somewhat feverishly, her mind aflame. He has a cut that is far from shallow—why is it not bleeding? Why is there no trickle of red dipping into the hollow of his throat before being soaked up by the misplaced pelt at his shoulders.

She can’t help him.

Something happens and even Mythal can’t help him.

Some parts of the vir’abelasan remain and they show her twining tendrils of magic; a fading green and a stark blue, the latter trying desperately to wind around whatever remains of the former. It all rushes out of Solas.

She watches Elgar’nan reach out. The light does not want to go, but he pulls it in. It rebels only slightly, and then there is no more green.

There is no more Solas.

His chest has long ceased heaving. She just refused to notice it.

Elgar’nan shatters him. He breaks him apart. Limb follows limb. Stone should not snap like dry twigs, yet it cracks and splits and tears.

There is no more Solas. No more Solas. No more.

She grows a little hysteric then. Perhaps a bit more than just a little. Her shoulder remains injured, the memory of the burrowing pressure of Dirthamen’s bird’s beak radiating down to the elbow like a phantom pain. Her arm feels heavy, her fingers stiff, slow to respond. But she sifts through the rubble—or ash, she supposes, for this is what it must be now. What Solas is.

Freckles, dimples, a smile that was always a touch reserved, bones and blood and muscles and cloth—all but stone turned rubble turned ash.

She forages through it. She plunges her hand in deep and rummages around for—something. A piece of him. A keepsake. Anything.

He did not wear his wolf jaw amulet, the absentminded thought happens by.

Perhaps she can have that.

Perhaps she can have only that.

There is nothing more.

No Solas, no Solas, no Solas. And it’s a mantra that will not leave the confines of her skull, bouncing around like some terrible echo, forever trapped between her temples.

A hand comes down to rest upon her injured shoulder. She feels the cool press of metal before she feels the rapidly coiling dread; it winds around her heart and she can almost taste it at the back of her throat.

Elgar’nan looks down at her. He has to crane his neck, tilt his head, but the look he wears is curious.

She expects gloating.

She gets puzzlement.

A bleary figure materializes a few steps at his back. The swarm of Dirthamen’s ravens parts to let him through. He stays a careful distance away, daring not approach just as she dares not flinch.

“It is odd,” Elgar’nan says.

“He released it all, in the end,” he says.

“I feel too much,” he murmurs.

He sounds different. The lilt, the elvhen accent that carries and drags out vowels in a singsong, remains but it isn’t as pronounced. His enunciation changes. He doesn’t sound so very much the foreigner upon articulating harsher words; his tongue doesn’t knot whenever encountering consonants.

There is an emphasis that wasn’t there before. Something that she recognizes and that makes her cringe. Makes her blood boil in mindless rage before cooling upon harsh realization. Solas spoke like this.

“You should not stay here,” Elgar’nan says.

She doesn’t quite register the exact instant something within her snaps, let it be a last thread of sanity or self-control. She follows his lead when he tugs at her arm. Up, up, up until she is unsteady and wobbly and shaky but upright.

There is caked grime beneath her fingernails. She doesn’t mind adding something fresher to the lot.

She gets her thumb so very close to his eye socket. She scratches. She feels the blood well and rise before he grips her by the wrist he broke too many times and Solas healed with trembling hands.

She will gouge his eyes out. She did promise him that much—and here he is, touching her once more.

Let him blink, just once, just once is all she needs.

But he stares at her with bewildered eyes—and that is the only injury he sports. So many lie dead, beaten to a pulp. He can’t be pristine. He has to be bloody too. He can’t be the only one not hurting.

“Perhaps ink does not suit your features after all,” Elgar’nan says. He swipes the thumb of his free hand over her lips.

“Why would you say that?” she says. Because he was the one to take up the chisel, to choose the crude and ancient way over the painless one. He was the one to decide on white and etch whorls and spirals into her skin like she was nothing more than a canvass while deaf to her pain.

“I am uncertain,” he admits.

He gets a hand between her shoulder blades and slides it up, until he’s cupping the back of her neck, keeping her from squirming.

His gaze floats away. He stares at a point past her head.

“You served Mythal,” he calls, his voice carrying across the bloodied field. “You and your men both.”

The elvhen is basic enough. She understands—she wishes she didn’t.

“Yes,” comes the reply and the voice is hoarse, tired, familiar.

“I carry the last shard of her,” Elgar’nan says.

“Yes,” Abelas simply repeats, and he sounds as numb as she feels. She doesn’t need to see to know.

There is a shuffle of feet. She sees him only in her peripheral, a hunched figure dragging a battered staff, the sylvanwood having been hacked at with swords and daggers in equal measures. He walks past Elgar’nan without raising his weapon once, only using it as a walking stick.

Abelas doesn’t meet her eyes. He takes place by Dirthamen and leans heavily against his staff.

One by one his Sentinels, at least those who survived, form ranks around him.

“How will you ride when you can barely stand?” Elgar’nan says.

“I won’t ride,” she says.

“But you cannot make the journey back to Citadelle du Corbeau on foot,” he says, corners of his lips rising ever so slightly in teasing.

He should not know the name of Solas’ stronghold. At least not the proper Orlesian one.

“Whoever will take care of that litter of nugs your red-headed friend discovered if you do not return?” he says.

He should not know of the nugs. He should not know of Leliana.

The grip he maintains on her neck keeps her legs from folding; she feels the stretch in her spine just when she is about to go limp.

He calls for a horse that hasn’t gone wild. He climbs first and then, near effortlessly, hauls her up in front of him. It is awkward. Her legs are swung to the side. She can feel his armored shoulder brush against her cheek whenever the movements of the animal pitch him slightly forward.

She is grateful that her hair is in the way, a heavy curtain. She wishes it were lead.

“Mythal is not gone,” she says. Somehow the words get out. Somehow she hasn’t gone completely mute.

“Not completely,” Elgar’nan answers.

“Solas is,” she whispers.

There is a pause. A silence that could be taunting—mocking—teasing—both.

“Not completely, da’mi,” he repeats. “Even when you burn something, the smallest of things remains. Ashes, a fleeting thought, some odd token. If one is smart, they keep and use it well.”

All that is left of Solas is _some odd token_ buried deep within Elgar’nan.

It sinks in and she feels so terribly numb that every rise of her chest proves a struggle. Her lungs burn.

She should probably turn, twist her entire body, try to sink her dulled claws into his eyes again. She should and she can’t; just like Abelas should not follow the one at whose hands he suffered, the very same man he opposed not an hour ago.

She stares at her dangling feet and thinks of blue eyes.

 

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Elgar’nan says and he sounds confused at his own words.

He catches Leliana’s wrist when she flicks it, when a concealed knife slides down the inside of her sleeve and into her waiting grasp. He squeezes until her knuckles go white, bloodless. And Ellana knows that look. The realization that bone is about to snap or tendons to rip.

Leliana relaxes her fingers. The knife falls to the ground with a clatter.

The ancient elven defenses no longer blaze bright. There’s no inferno raging in the courtyard. Once Elgar’nan deactivated them a calm settled over, and it is eerie.

“You’ve served him well,” he says, pensive.

“I served no one,” Leliana says, the soft song of her Orlesian accent undermined by venom. She backs away, rubbing the raw skin around her wrist.

She is right, she didn’t. A cohabitation forced upon the both of them, Solas and Leliana alike, by circumstances.

Ellana doesn’t think Elgar’nan cares much for circumstances.

“I too have birds to do my bidding,” Elgar’nan says. He extends his arm just a little, bending it at the elbow, a perch awaiting Dirthamen’s ravens. And they come. Three and no more with their eyes of glass. “This world is new and I am old. I would be a fool to let go of a smart advisor.”

“My birds won’t fly for you,” Leliana says.

She doesn’t scream. Or hiss. Her tone never escalates. Perhaps that is the terrifying part, Ellana decides, but then again she herself can’t do much more than watch it all with some kind of calm indifference.

“They shall,” Elgar’nan says, acknowledging her with nothing but a nod, gaze wandering, “and you will learn as they do.”

 

 

“He would have killed you before,” Ellana whispers. “He never much cared for others. Something isn’t right. I don’t understand.”

She doesn’t expect the blow, but it comes. Leliana’s palm connects with her cheek with a resounding _slap_. Her neck cracks. She staggers.

She stares.

Leliana hits her again. This time her hand finds itself on the receiving end, but her muscles don’t go slack from surprise. They tighten to maintain a solid hold on the wolf jawbone nestled so fondly in the embrace of her clammy fist.

She feels the ridge of ancient teeth bite into skin. Break it. Just the surface, not enough to bleed. But just enough to feel.

“Let go of that,” Leliana hisses. “What is wrong with you?”

“There is no more Solas,” she says in way of response.

“There was no Solas for years. This is no different,” Leliana says. “Wake up.”

“You don’t understand,” Ellana murmurs. “You didn’t see what I did.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Leliana parries. “Don’t you dare put pain on a scale and weigh which side hurts the most. Don’t you dare pit different experiences against one another.”

She didn’t sift through ashes. Didn’t watch him being taken apart limb by limb like some marionette.

Ellana gives her a half-shrug.

Leliana looks bewildered. She looks ready to spit in her face.

Ellana retreats toward the light. She climbs on the windowsill and thinks of freckles this time. It is housed in a small alcove. It’s like some kind of sanctuary without being anything of the sort.

“You will break your nails and bloody your fingers trying to open that lock,” she remarks, watching the Nightingale and Spymaster of the Inquisition, companion and lover to the Hero of Ferelden, kneel by the locked door.

These were Solas’ quarters, she thinks. This is where he read to her. Where she licked his fingers to aid him in anchoring thick pages of vellum. Before he was stone. Before he was dust.

“Then I will bloody them and when they do break I’ll force you to try while waiting for them to grow back,” Leliana snaps.

She should feel more than this, she supposes.

Ellana nods.

 

 

It doesn’t last long—this, whatever it is. It’s like some odd purgatory, a captivity with good wine and rich food.

Perhaps it seems so only to her.

Silence reigns for three days. Enough for her to stop caring about the dull shuffle of feet coming from the courtyard and the various rearrangements. Enough for Leliana to grow into a frantic beast and pace holes into the rug.

“There are wards,” Ellana remarks lazily. She rests her head against the wall, legs stretched out along the wide windowsill.

She thinks she sees stars when she closes her eyes. Bright spots that are suddenly tinted red whenever an errant sunbeam cuts through the thin flesh of eyelids. It’s not unpleasant.

“There are wards,” she repeats when the sound of Leliana’s nail finally breaking resonates around the room.

She doesn’t even know if she’s glad for her company anymore.

It’s so hard to peel her eyes open and when she does, Ellana wishes she hadn’t. Leliana briefly sucks on her bloody thumb. She glares.

Ellana thinks she might rip off her own arm to chuck it at her after running out of ammunition. There are books. She’ll throw those first.

“Then dispel them,” Leliana says.

Words are heavy. None come easily. Perhaps it’s the wine.

She doesn’t really look at Leliana. Light dances across the wall over her shoulder and that is what Ellana concentrates on.

“Not here,” she sighs. “Downstairs. Around the stronghold. Pick that lock, pick a second, maybe even a third, but you’ll end up in front of a wall too tall to climb either way.” She shrugs. Turns her gaze to the window. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Leliana snaps.

“I’m going to sleep,” Ellana says. “You can have the bed. I’m good here.”

A short, derisive huff comes from the other side of the room. “Of course you are.”

She hears Leliana empty the carafe of wine they were brought, pouring every last drop out and then shattering the crystal decanter. Glass crunches beneath the soles of her boots until she finally finds a sufficiently sharp piece.

The sunlight is warm on her cheek. It almost feels like timid fingertips.

 

 

There’s a certain type of headache that comes with sleeping too much. She never really thought _this_ would be a problem she’d be having.

She almost falls off the windowsill when the door opens. Not out of surprise or eagerness, but only because Leliana springs to her feet so quickly that the sudden movement is disconcerting.

“Put that away before you hurt yourself,” says a voice she’s only heard twice or thrice before.

Ellana squints through the haziness of her vision.

It’s somewhat of an interesting picture. Leliana pretending there is no glass shard up her sleeve while Dirthamen scowls down at her.

She didn’t think his monotone could be quite so loud. Something throbs behind her eyes, adding to the migraine.

“Come,” he says, taking one small step to the side to allow access to the door, “there are explanations to be had, letters to decipher, and birds to send out. You are well-versed in this age’s politics, we’ve been told.”

“I am,” Leliana says, wary.

She drops the glass shard as a gesture of goodwill.

Ellana knows there is absolutely no goodness or willingness behind it. Leliana will jump out of the first open window. She thinks this is an opportunity. She is playing without knowing how small her odds really are.

“Come then,” Dirthamen repeats, “and be useful.”

They leave. Leliana doesn’t look over her shoulder. She pulls her hood up as she trails behind Dirthamen.

The door remains wide open.

And Ellana stares until she stops caring. She shrugs once more—at the nothingness this time—and turns back toward the window.

 

Hours pass and Leliana doesn’t return. Not yet. Because _not yet_ is better than never. There is a sound, however. A soft rapping of knuckles against the wood of the door. She draws her knees to her chest and rests her chin atop them.

“You’ve not come down,” Elgar’nan says.

He looks. He analyzes. He takes in the broken glass and the scratched lock. He gazes at her fingers, curled tight into a fist, and searches for cuts and scratches.

“Didn’t want to risk running into you,” she drawls.

She doubts anyone could actually simply run into him. He never happens by. He rounds a corner unexpectedly and causes one to crash into him.

She huffs.

She’s not quite sure where this sudden bravado stems from. She was always so careful around him, at times allowing heavy words to slip through but never giving in to wilder emotions. That’s what not caring does, she thinks idly, worrying a too-long thread at her sleeve.

“Where is Leliana?” she asks.

“She is a smart woman,” Elgar’nan says.

She feels her left eye twitch. “That’s not what I asked.”

“If I’d wanted someone—anyone—gone, you’d have heard them,” he says, tracing the indents left by Leliana’s nails.

The words are far from pretty, but they aren’t lies.

“Yes,” she murmurs, “I suppose I would have.”

He laughs. It’s an odd sound. Lighthearted and short-lived. Breath catching, rolling, dying on not quite a snort but something so very similar.

A joint pops out and into place from the ferocity with which her neck snaps in his direction. She thinks the furrow of her brow will leave marks so severe it is.

“That’s not your laugh,” she whispers.

He stole it just like he did everything else.

His pleasant demeanor turns to dust. For but a moment, she sees splinters in his mask and thinks this is when he finally snaps at her, when he burns the room and her with it.

He dislikes what she has to say—what she’s already said.

But then he merely shakes his head. He taps the doorknob with two fingers, nodding in time.

“You are seeing ghosts,” he says.

But she isn’t.

If anything, she hears them.

She looks at him, she stares, but it is gone, that lone spark of remembrance that for a second shocked her heart into racing. Still she searches and it prompts his amusement just like her whispered affirmation did his anger.

He takes her chin between thumb and forefinger. Tilts her head left and right as one might do with a peculiar specimen.

“Deciding on what color ink to use this time?” she quips.

“Hush,” he says, wearing the pretense of a frown, “you cannot afford sharp teeth or a mean bite.”

Perhaps not teeth, not even a bite, but she can afford something. As he continues looking at her, bewilderment concealed by a shroud of insouciance that is still transparent enough for her to peek through, she thinks there is something to be gained from his puzzlement.

 

 

It’s the little things, then. Little things that set her mind aflame and make her lose herself in contemplation.

The way that, on occasion, he wrinkles his nose in disdain. She looks at him and thinks of bitter tea.

How he laughs and immediately turns on his heels, cutting the familiar sound short with an even more familiar gesture. She listens, she looks still, and thinks of Haven not long after its destruction and how peaceful it appeared in the Fade.

How he clasps his hands at his back, a habit that belongs to many and which he and Solas share. But it becomes a common sight; routine rather than the casual quirk. She looks at him and remembers the balcony at Skyhold and a confession that came too quickly but was lovely nevertheless—ar lath ma ar lath ma ar lath ma.

It’s the little things.

Things to which he has no rights but which she covets and wishes she could drag out and keep for herself.

 

 

It all changes when she finds his journal. Lethargy is lifted and replaced by crushing unrest. The pages have gorged themselves on ink and stick together. The writer took no care to shake the quill semi-clean, did not sprinkle pounce to blot out the worst of it. She doesn’t seek out initials; the penmanship is painfully familiar without any kind of confirmation.

It’s a dialogue. A testament to two very loud voices forced to coexist.

A light hand sketched a faint outline of Skyhold—and the next few pages are obsessive drawings concentrating on details. Where the quill pressed down too heavily, she sees it were to scribble over now-incoherent sentences. Something he didn’t want to remember or perhaps aspired to forget.

Solas fought words with outlines and pictures and paintings of bleeding monochrome.

 _Two thousand. Three thousand. Four. It is a questions of numbers_ —written in careful Elvhen.

 _Not of numbers. Of lives_ —countered in shaky Common

 _I did not sacrifice myself for your sentimentality to take over_ —torn paper and holes over accents.

 _I am sorry_ —barely visible, just an impression of ink against the parchment.

_Friend, friend, friend—_

The same word again and again. Heavy and light. Repeated over the course of two entire pages, front and back.

The spaces disappear. Words blend together.

_You are so loud—and you are too quiet._

Silence. Pages that were grazed and nothing more. She can still spot imprints of fingertips stained with ink and dirt and blood. The latter flakes off when her nail scratches over it.

The last entry is a fever dream of paper and a sole name.

 _Ellana_ —boldly.

 _Ellana_ —faintly.

 _Ellana_ —shakily.

Her leather bracelet, trapped between the worn cover and the last page. She traces the torn fastenings.

~~ellanaellanaellanaellana~~

And once more.

~~Ellana~~

_Peace, my friend_ —the fluid Elvhen intervenes in the midst of the obsessive ramblings and her name evaporates.

 _El_ —the hand that wrote Common has stilled— _yes, you are right._

_Ma serannas. We march then._

_We march._

Solas never had Mythal. It was always the other way around. She wonders how many more of these diaries he wrote over the years, trying desperately to appease the voice inside his head. How many he burned or buried.

It doesn’t really matter until it does. Until the haze finally lifts and she hugs the leather bound journal to her chest.

 

 

There’s disgust in Leliana’s eyes, but she thinks she doesn’t truly hate her. She’s mostly angry about the silence more than she is about the passive front she continually displays. She observes with silence and scorn from afar.

Leliana offers an embrace the first time she shuffles back to their shared room in the early hours of morning, nightshirt crumpled and hair dishevelled.

“Are you well?” she asks.

“I’m well,” Ellana confirms.

“Stop it,” she says after the third time, glaring at the obvious mark where shoulder and neck meet. “He listens to you. Stop going to him.”

“Hmm,” Ellana hums, half-listening.

Leliana has grown surprisingly physical. She goes to slap the cup of tea out of Ellana’s hand before she restrains herself, seizing her own wrist to still its flight.

“I don’t understand you,” she says, baffled. “I don’t recognize you. What do you hope to gain?”

The pause is long. It hangs like a curtain of lead between them. “I can’t tell you,” Ellana says.

It’s not her secret to share. It’s not even a secret at all, truly. Only something akin to a goal, and one she would disapprove of mightily.

Leliana throws her arms up.

“By all means, whore yourself out then,” she snaps, flicking her wrist in mock dismissal. So very Orlesian and so unlike Leliana; it is almost comical.

“You don’t mean that,” Ellana points out. It probably means something that her tone never rises, never falls, knows not a shift.

Leliana glowers. She curses in Orlesian before storming out. Ellana follows, steps slow and lazy, feet dragging. The rookery is high up and that is where she always goes when in search of relative solitude.

Dirthamen comes down just as she rushes up. He’s become a common sight, often seen in Leliana’s company. Always the messenger to her writer. The forced collaboration has long ceased to seem quite so forced on his part.

He’s ever quiet and, in passing, simply trails his fingers through her flowing fiery hair; it’s grown so long in the past years, wild and unkempt rather than cropped and stylized. It would be sick to care for silk slippers and fashionable hairstyles now.

Leliana jolts, almost baring her teeth at him. He continues down while she races up. The wick of her temper has been devoured long ago; she’ll ignite if she’s not careful.

She thought all her boldness forsaken, but when Dirthamen walks by her she reaches out to grip him by the sleeve.

“Don’t touch her,” she warns. Her nails dig, seek out loose threads and pull to anchor him in.

“Unlike my father I’ve no penchant for soiled goods,” he says, prying her hand off as if it were a viper. “Take your own advice; do not come near me.” His Common is stilted, he sounds odd.

Always the monotone, the lack of emotions. He is so hard to read; she never knows when he speaks in irritation or throws forth a true threat. But his eyes do narrow and his lips become a thin line. It is something, a sliver. She knows when to step back.

“Return to your window,” he says, pushing past her.

 

 

There are no more diaries or mementos to steal, but there is still Elgar’nan. He’s a constant; the shrivelled pages of Solas’ journal are not. She was never one to go for variables.

She sits while he writes and watches. Leliana would object, but Leliana also doesn’t understand—doesn’t know.

“Is this all you are?” she asks. “A loud voice behind very thick, very tall walls? It’s easy to be loud when there’s no one to strangle you.”

“Have you ever heard me raise it?” Elgar’nan counters, dipping his quill in ink. The corner of his lips rise in amusement, but he doesn’t look at her.

A fat blob rolls from the tip and lands inches from his sleeve. He avoids it easily before the material soaks any of it up.

“Is that all you were?” he turns the question around. “An Inquisitor mends the sky ands kills men like me. I do remember your words, yes. But you also shaped nations. You could even now, if you wished. Your words hold weight.” And there he smiles, still looking down. “And your sly friend made—makes sure they are heard.”

She is useful just as Leliana is useful. She wonders when their usefulness will finally run its course. When they’ll be tossed out. When his interest wanes.

“You are not impressive,” she says, leaning further back into the plush armchair she’s claimed. “I expected more.”

“Oh,” he says, “what did you expect, pray tell? Armies to sweep across the land? Even long before you walked, glory and fear alone could have never supported Arlathan. It took many blades and even more words.”

“And slaves,” she says.

“If that is how you wish to put it,” he says, unperturbed. “We are strangers in a world that once was wholly ours, but now stands uncharted. There are adjustments to be made.”

She feels her eye begin to twitch and rises before the urge to slam her fist onto the desk takes over.

“Why do you seek to provoke me?” his voice inquires, and now there is a certain coldness behind it.

Because something might give in. Something might break through. Something that isn’t his and she could reclaim. “Ellana, Ellana. You should leave until you know what it is you’re doing,” he chides.

She stalks off after her name is repeated a third time. This isn’t a sequence she can bear. Not anymore. Ellana. Ellana. Ellana. She can’t stand the sound of her own name after witnessing it scribbled in desperation.

 

 

As always, it’s about the little things. She doesn’t mind the conflicting present or bitter aftertaste. Not when she pushes against his chest and feels a tiny thrumming. Bare skin against bare skin and just a hint of something unknown, yet familiar, that does not feel like him. There is no anchor, no magic strong enough, but she pulls still, aiming if not to keep then at least to experience.

He isn’t whole, not truly, and the laugh he exhales against her lips can’t compare to the one he owned before.

“You do not mind me kissing you at all now,” he remarks.

 _A necessity_ , she wishes to say, but that would cause him to question. He is good at deciphering puzzles and she is bad at patience.

So she merely turns her head, forcing his lips to meet her chin, her jaw, her ear. A small contradiction. He pulls the nightdress up and over her head and when a lock gets caught on a button, he takes the time to untangle it before covering her body with his again.

He traces lines of a vallaslin that is no longer there, and she wonders if he means to reapply it.

She feels the curve of his lips against the hollow of her throat, an unmistakable smile, and allows her hand to rove the expanse of his back. Always chasing after that one waning spark that becomes agitated only when she is near, but which still keeps getting weaker no matter how hard her claws sink into it.

 

 

“Come with me,” Abelas says.

He is still in command, still has his Sentinels and bears the markings of Mythal. At a glance, nothing’s changed if not for his head which now hangs so low.

He leads her to the library and climbs the highest ladder to retrieve crumpled parchments. He walks in circles, retreats, makes her follow him out and into a room housing an eluvian that never got fully restored. There, too, he finds journals bound in leather. They dwell in the oddest of places. All of them, he entrusts into her care.

“Don’t blame him,” he says. “By the end, he could barely hear himself.”

“Why are you giving me these?” she asks. If he were to reach out, to change his mind and choose to reclaim them, she knows she would pounce.

“So you may find some peace,” Abelas says.

This is not about peace, but he wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain, and so she merely offers him a nod in gratitude. He leaves unconvinced and doubtful.

 

 

Her nose is deep into her third cup by the time her usually carefully contained bravado slips loose.

“Absolutely incredible,” she mutters, her voice throwing back an echo as it drowns in the swirling wine. “What an asshole.”

“What was that?” Elgar’nan asks, idly caressing her elbow.

He’s never been one for public displays of—no, not affection, it’s never that. He reserves the touching for behind closed doors, but now his lips too are stained with amber and his fingers travel, find a patch of skin where her sleeve has ridden up and rub circles into it. Nothing that one could see from miles away, but still telling.

“You heard me,” she says, allowing all the spite to come out.

She glares across the dining hall where Dirthamen has settled by Leliana. She won’t look at her, but it doesn’t mean Ellana’s turned a blind eye as well. The resentment is natural; she bears no grudge but retains the care.

“Get him away from her,” she says.

Elgar’nan gives her a sideway look. “You’re well into your cups, are you not da’mi?” he says. “It’s been a time since I’ve heard any colorful language from you.”

“Save your elvhen glory for those who want it,” she manages through gritted teeth.

And she too hasn’t heard a laugh quite so loud from him in so very long. It’s a bark he can’t quite suppress and which draws attention. She remembers the swarm of birds and the massacred Dalish clan. She remembers Liara with her bright eyes and the gaping hole in her abdomen and feels sick. When she looks at Leliana, it is all she can see. Beaks and talons and eyes of black ice.

She goes to stand, no longer caring, before being abruptly stopped.

“Come,” Elgar’nan says, steering her away.

“Diana,” he addresses Dirthamen as they near him and, mercifully, his hand drops just before it covers Leliana’s. _Stop._ One word, just one, uttered in passing is enough to make him retreat.

She releases the painful breath she’s been holding just as Leliana loosens her grip on a butter knife.

In the corner of her eye, she watches Abelas walk up closer and casually lean against the wall.

Then, Leliana exhales too.

Her chest feels lighter.

The dining hall disappears in the distance as do all voices except for his. She remembers the thrill—can never quite forget—of feeling all those stolen, little parts dwelling beneath his skin and shivers when he closes the door to his chambers, when his hands find her back and deft fingers uncover flesh beneath cloth.

He is somewhat hasty. She tastes wine and brandy alike when he tilts her head, hand gripping chin, so he may kiss her over her shoulder.

“There is something you’re not telling,” he murmurs between breaths, “but I will not ask for now.”

She feels her heart seize a little before he pushes her down and then she’s drowning in silks and pillows. It’s so frantic, so quick, that she barely has the time to concentrate on this one little thing that matters. She doubts the disgust and sickness at the back of her throat are due to wine alone.

“No,” he says, catching her hand and guiding it away after she settles it over his heart. “You will look at me.”

He cradles her head in one hand, tendrils of hair weaving about his fingers, and when he moves she gasps, thinking all of it will come out in chunks. His skin is too hot and she can’t disconnect herself, can’t not see him, can’t search for that lone _keepsake_ trapped past blood and bone and marrow.

He pulled Mythal out of Solas and Solas out of himself. Surely she can, surely there is—

“Ellana,” he says and makes her hate the sound of her own name.

There’s his tongue tracing her lower lip, and his hand gliding over her collarbone before finding her breast, and the feeling of him between her legs, each thrust bringing her closer to the headboard until, unavoidably, her head connects with it.

It’s too real and it’s not something her mind can’t afford.

He touches her afterwards as he always does. He thumbs the tip of her ear. Says, “I never did get you earrings.”

“You can choke on them,” she says casually, staring at the ceiling.

He hums, amused, hand settling on her stomach before dipping between her thighs.

“I hate it when you touch me,” she says. And she lets him to feel something, someone, that is no longer here. Only contradictions remain, it seems.

“But you’ve sighed so sweetly a morning past,” he says on a breathy laugh, arm locking around her waist so he may roll her to face him.

“I was also drunk,” she says.

She doesn’t even know why she bothers with arguing.

This is no more than a vicious, fucked-up ouroboros the existence of which she finally acknowledges when he says, “I do love you in white,” come morning.

When he rests a possessive hand on the small of her back as he guides her out.

She shakes his hold off, feeling claustrophobia rise.

He doesn’t see Mythal in her and she can’t find Solas in him. Borrowed time is all she has. While he still thinks he cares, while his interest lives. She can’t decide the worst outcome: that said interest remains and blossoms or fades. Both make her nauseous.

“I’m going to the library,” she says.

“As you wish,” Elgar’nan answers.

The trailing touch of his fingers makes her skin crawl.

 

 

Abelas finds her first. His mask slips off when he sees her sitting cross-legged amid a sea of arcane tomes and Solas’ diaries.

“There must be something in there,” she says, gesturing around, before he can speak. “I could—”

“No,” he cuts her off.

He rips the journal she currently holds and allows flames to devour it.

“No,” he repeats when she yelps and lunges at him. He holds her at arm-length with ease. “I did not give these to you so you could obsess over them.”

“You were to find peace,” he says, giving her a solid shaking. “Closure.”

He goes to burn the rest, books and journals alike, but she slams into him and the surprise of it all catches him off guard.

“Don’t you dare,” she whispers. “He is still—I can help—I owe him—”

“Ellana,” he says, pushing back against her but not going for the tomes this time. Carefully, Abelas tiptoes around them and she watches him, eyes narrowed, ready to parry his fire with her ice if he so much as blinks the wrong way.

“Solas had Mythal,” she says. “How can you not—”

And once more he interrupts her. “It’s not like that,” he murmurs and finally the angry veneer falls off. The pity he freely gives is even worse. “It’s not a question of whom,” he begins again, quietly this time, “but what.”

He says, “The person is gone. Fragments of who he was remain.”

He takes her shaking hand, reverting back to whispering, “You seek to free a soul but there is none left.”

“Fragments,” she repeats, stunned, focusing on a point above his shoulder. “Fragments are still something.”

She pulls away from him. The circle of books welcomes her back. “He is owed better,” she says.

“You owe him nothing,” Abelas protests. He rests against the wall, shoulders slumped, face contorted in disbelief and sorrow.

“I owe the memory of him quite a bit,” she counters. “Even war criminals get graves.”

 

 

Leliana is very talkative this particular morning.

“We’ve arranged a meeting with a human delegation,” she prattles excitedly. She keeps scanning her face for something. Perhaps the same thrill that animates her.

“That’s not wise,” Ellana says.

“It’s not war,” Leliana says.

They drink in silence. The tea is perhaps a tad too hot, but it settles her nerves.

“Interesting earrings,” Leliana remarks, reaching over to sweep her hair over her shoulder to allow for a better view.

“Thank you,” Ellana answers and they speak no more of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How and why do I even let this get so long??? Honestly I wrote this while under painkillers following a wisdom tooth removal and well, wow, lemme tell you the words come so easily then lol.
> 
> I will also be writing, as already said, an Elgar'nan POV and another alternate ending kind of following the trope of Solas surviving (or basically a sort-of continuation to chapter 3)
> 
> Whew done rambling.
> 
> *sighs again* this is so unnecessarily long...


End file.
